SZ 2 Persistant slab on the Dome Headwall Direct

We skied the Dome Headwall Direct run in open trees where we found awesome powder and good snow stability. On steep convex rolls, we had to stomp very hard to get any sort of cracking. We traversed left across the flat spot in the middle of the run to reach the pillow lines we had scoped. As we drop in at around 1600m, we suddenly notice more cracking and pillows wanting to release. The first skier rides down a safer line in open trees further away from the cliffs. He triggers a size 1 on his first turn, stops on a safety island and a size 2 releases right below him. The second skier rode down to reach the safety island and triggers another size 1 that propagated to where the previous slide had started. The January 29th surface hoar was extremely reactive on that windless NE aspect between 1400m and 1600m. We didn’t expect that kind of sliding on terrain that wasn’t especially steep (~30°).

January 29th surface hoar was extremely reactive between 1400 and 1600m on a sheltered NE aspect. The terrain was slightly unsupported and would slide on the surface hoar at any cost. The crown thickness would vary from 30 to 60cm depending on how wide it was from the trigger point. No one was caught in the slide. Since the slope wasn’t exposed or steep. The slide slowly went down to the flat meadow at the bottom of the valley.