At 10AM our party of two began the ascent of Richardson ridge via the NE shoulder of Corral chute 3. We added a stop in lower Corral 1 for turns in 15 cm of powder on top of the March 20th crust. At 12PM we took temps: -5 in upper storm snow and -10 air temp in the shade. We rounded the NE shoulder of Corral 3 at 2400m where the March 20th crust was softer and not obvious under the ski. Multiple hasty tests in the alpine included hard hand shears 50cm down, presumably on the Feb 3rd crust; HS 100+ cm. We spaced out 30m and began climbing the shoulder. As we crossed the first obvious rock band at 2430m only the rear skier felt a small local whumpf typical of facets around boulders. As the lead skier doubled back over the same rock band both skiers experienced large audible whumpfs, 5 seconds later a wide skier remote size 3 avalanche propagated 300m to the west from a few meters below Richardson Ridge sliding to ground and stopping in a terrain trap below us. We believe the failure initiated on facets sitting on the Feb 3rd crust, exacorbated by buried surface hour around the rocks that may have stepped down to January surface hoar. There was no skier involvement.
