Avalanche
- Slab Width
- 15 m
- Trigger Type
- Skier
- Slab Thickness
- 36 cm
- Start Zone Aspect
- North
- Start Zone Elevation
- 2682 m
A group of three of us were heading up Bowman Fork/Yellow Jacket heading up towards Gobblers Knob. We decided to ski a short north facing shot down the ridge from Yellow Jacket Trees that still held cold snow to get some quick turns on our way up. The right side of the shot that we skied had 4 tracks from a previous day. We decided to ski the left side which was still untouched. The slope was skied by the first two people who then traversed over to a safe spot. The third skier was cutting to the left just below the ridge to ski left of the previous two tracks when the avalanche was initiated at the ski tips. The soft slab failed on surface facets from our January/February drought about 14 inches deep. The avalanche was only 50 feet wide but got funneled down through the willows in the gully and ran roughly 400 feet. We followed the debris down to ensure that the debris did not hit the skin track below which it did not. This avalanche happened at 10:00 AM and occurred on a 30 degree north facing slope. We decided to turn around after this happened thinking that our other north facing objectives for the day would also be suspect.