Avalanche
- Slab Width
- 12 m
- Weak Layer
- Facets
- Trigger Type
- Skier
- Vertical Fall
- 122 m
- Avalanche Type
- Soft Slab
- Slab Thickness
- 36 cm
- Trigger Detail
- Remotely Triggered
- Start Zone Aspect
- Northwest
- Avalanche Problem
- Persistent Weak Layer
- Start Zone Elevation
- 3078 m
Triggered avalanche on the lookers right chute in Tri chutes. Dug a pit at 9500 ft approaching the chutes and had results at ECT15 but little to no propagation just below the melt freeze crust from the last few days since the storm Monday/Tuesday. Our mistake was this pit was dug in the meadow below which is more west facing and no wind loading. Our group of three decided to continue skinning up with the positive results.
As we got up to about 10,000 ft the snow appeared to be deeper but no evidence of cracking/collapsing yet. About two minutes before the avalanche the trail breaker had a large collapse and asked the two others if they heard it. Neither did and he thought with how loud it was it could've been a nearby resort performing mitigation with them opening soon.
Two minutes later another large collapse. This collapse propagated up and started an avalanche in a thinner rocky area 100 ft above the leader and ran down the middle of the chute. The skier that triggered the collapse yelled avalanche giving the bottom two skiers time to move out of the way. No one carried but the avalanche ran 400 ft on bed rock through the chute.
Debris pile was not large enough to bury someone but would've been a rough ride through rocks.