Avalanche: West Monitor

Triggered this avalanche remotely from about 200 feet away on flat terrain. We had already triggered another pocket just a few minutes earlier and were walking out when we remotely triggered this one. The first pocket was triggered right at my ski tips and window pained the slope but it did not run due to low angle terrain at the bottom. The cracks were around a foot deep all the way down to the early season facets. and looking closely revealed that it was a hard slab. The interesting thing is I was walking on basically the surface with just a few inches from last night on top, then I took another step and hit a thin spot in the slab and collapsed the whole slope.

After we took a look we proceeded up the ridge and triggered a bigger slide remotely from approximately 200ft away. This slide was also a hard slab and ran a couple hundred feet into flatter terrain. Trent was right on today when he stated "find a slab and your likely to trigger a slide. This is a scary and unpredictable set up in my mind, it's not hair trigger, but when you find the weak spot in the slab it's gonna be a ugly ride in hard slab conditions. We couldn't get any results walking the ridgeline on W and S Monitor which leads me to believe that the slab is not right on the ridge but farther down the slope, it might feel alright for the first ten turns, then when you hit the slab in a thin spot you might trigger a slide that will definitely ruin your day. Also of note was two natural avalanches in W Monitor that occurred yesterday, one was a repeater of the skier triggered slide a few weeks ago that ran well on to the flats and another pocket right down the gut.

There was also a rime crust on the wind exposed S, SW and W between 9000-10000ft. The first video is the main slide and the second is inspecting the first one.