Dam break floods on steep slopes occur in diverse settings and can encompass natural events such as mudflows and avalanches as well as the failure of manmade dams. Laboratory experiments were undertaken to investigate the dam break flows of pure water down a variably sloping, rectangular fixed bed channel. A high-speed digital camera was used to track the flow. The images were processed to compute the front wave position and velocity, the maximum water height, the passing wave depth and the wave profile. The effects of varying the controlled parameters (i.e., the bed roughness and its inclination angle, the volume of water in the reservoir) were explored.