The numbers give a sense of scale. The scar stretches 350 meters across — roughly the length of three American football fields laid end to end. That width represents an enormous volume of frozen ground and ice that moved during a single event.

The researchers' adapted figure (Figure 2 of Young et al. 2026) shows the terrain before and after the slide, documenting the size of the detached zone.

Why does this matter now?

Identifying a new landslide type matters because it changes how scientists interpret similar scars elsewhere in permafrost terrain. If slabs of frozen ground can detach and race downhill without first thawing into mud, then existing hazard models may underestimate how quickly and how far these events can travel.

The Redstone River slide dates to 2018, giving researchers several years of post-event data to analyze. The 2026 publication marks the formal proposal of this failure mechanism.

It's worth keeping expectations in check, though. The researchers propose this classification based on their analysis of this event; additional studies of other slides will need to confirm whether the same slab-detachment process occurs widely, or whether Redstone River is an outlier.

What comes next?

The findings arrive as the American Geophysical Union prepares for its 2026 Annual meeting, where permafrost and cold-regions research typically features prominently. Press registration for that meeting is open now.

For communities and infrastructure in permafrost regions — roads, pipelines, and settlements built on ground long assumed stable — a new failure mode is a data point worth watching. Confirmation would mean reassessing which slopes are actually safe.

For now, the 350-meter scar above the Redstone River stands as the clearest evidence yet that frozen hillsides can fail in ways scientists hadn't catalogued.

Credit for imagery: Adapted from Young et al. 2026 (Figure 2).