Just sorting through the pics of the recent R Gruppe Grand Tour for a Porsche World magazine feature. Here’s one that brings back happy memories: the time the front runners came around a corner at a rate of knots, to find one mountain collapsed in a landslide and a road full of Volvo earthmovers shifting the debris. Everywhere we went, workmen were repairing landslide damage.

Sam and I actually came back down this road about twenty minutes later. There was a ten-ton rock in the middle of the road, right where my car is parked out of shot. It fell off the top of the cliff just a few minutes after we left to head back up the Col as part of a second, smaller landslide. Two lucky R Gruppe escapes in one day! We were on our best behaviour after that.

Don’t suppose I need to say that a bit of Porsche tyre smoke needed to clear before I could take this picture.

About Alpine Landslides

Landslides are apparently pretty common around these parts. According to this New Zealand geology website, “in the terrain made up of hard rock and steep, high slopes, landslides range from huge rock avalanches that can shape mountain peaks and travel several kilometres in minutes, to massive rock slides, rock falls and debris flows.

“It can be difficult to distinguish between rock avalanches, and ice or snow avalanches. Most avalanches originate as falling snow or ice, which can include rock and other debris. Avalanches of rock can also pick up ice and snow.” The landslide seen here originated as falling rock, which are “typically characterised by rapid, turbulent movement.