LARGE AVALANCHE - LOG CABIN - SKIER TRIGGERED

<p>Large splitboarder-triggered avalanche near the top of Log Cabin today. One person was hammered directly, carried at least 80 metres downhill, and buried to the waist, but somehow was totally unharmed. We were very lucky. I will leave it to someone else to rate the size of the thing, but it was pretty fucking large and slid a long way. It ran quite a bit farther down than my pictures and video show, as the terrain rolls over below the vantage from which I took them. The crown was every bit of four feet at it's thickest point, and it propagated over a fairly broad area. You will have no problem seeing it from the parking lot, that's for sure; it's immediately visible. The stability was pretty awesome right up until this happened - we didn't hear any whumphing or see any shooting cracks all day. The snow pack changed from soft stuff to a fairly consolidated windslab overlaid with soft stuff roughly 3/4s of the way up the slope. Ridges had sections that were just slab with no soft stuff, and the gullies were filled with delight. It wasn't super dense slab (i.e. sidehilling wasn't a challenge, and you could set an uphill edge super easily), but it was definitely consolidated. Seeing this, we stuck to ridges on the ascent, but we were still pretty comfortable with our risk exposure. As we got closer to the top, three riders skied the top of the ridge we were on, then cut well to our left and carried on their merry way - one dude on splitboard, two chicks on skis (I think they were both chicks) and a one gleeful dog. The two guys I was with were planning to skin to roughly the same place to change over and drop in. I was a little ahead and planned to skin over across a gully to an adjacent ridge, from where I planned to climb a bit higher. I may have been halfway up my ascent to the ridge when I heard a whumph, followed by a little drumming, followed by two of the b'ys screaming. I looked up slope and saw that a slab had broken off the ridge I was climbing about 120-150 metres upslope from me and was running straight at the b'ys. One sprinted out of the way, the other got fucking hammered. Lots of snow kept coming, and I was certain my friend had been completely buried. The two of us sprang into response, with our beacons pulled out and began scanning the scene. My other, luckier friend was positioned at the top of the aforementioned roll in the terrain over which I could not see, and he yelled that the friend who got hit was just buried to the waist at the end of the run out. He told us he was okay. We didn't believe him. Somehow, miraculously, he really wasn't hurt. Fuck. We dodged a bullet. We changed over and got the hell out of dodge. Take aways: 1) Jesus Christ we got lucky. I didn't think he was dead or anything, but I thought for sure we would be digging out a fully-submerged dude with some serious injuries. There were rocks (you've got that thick-to-thin, slabby thing going on on the alpine ridges, which probably helped the slide to propagate), he didn't hit any of them. He had split skis on and got smashed head on by a very large volume of fast-moving sow, but didn't twist up a knee or an ankle. He was surfing rad turns in awesome snow twenty minutes later. Again, just so, so lucky. I am flabbergasted that no one was hurt. 2) There is clearly a lot of snow being transported over the top of the mountain and onto the lee side. Again, the thickest part of the slab was four feet thick if it was an inch. I don't know what the surface it slid on looked like. We didn't want to hang out, so we just changed over, counted our lucky stars and hit the dusty trail. I am curious to know if it slid on that rain crust from a few weeks back. If any of you plan to have a look to try to figure it out, please be careful. There was still hangfire up there when we left. 3) There is no need to go that high right now. The turns on the way down were fantastic! It's still early season riding. There are plenty of rocks and you still have to be careful, but there is some primo fun to be had in the mid and lower portions of the slope. Once it starts to feel slabby, just change over and have some fun. Be safe out there. Cheers.</p>

Terrain Ridden

Alpine slopes, Mellow slopes, Dense trees, Steep slopes, Open trees.

Terrain Avoided

Convex slopes.

Avalanche Conditions

Slab avalanches today or yesterday.

Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.

Snow Conditions

Deep powder, Wind affected, Powder.