Sled Ski Slides

We sledded into the north side of Bearpaw Ridge for some below treeline powder skiing. Near the ridge top (1300 m BTL) we entered an old wildfire that left an area of sparse trees and alder. While the skiing was amazing avalanche conditions were touchy and we saw 5 size1.5-2 avalanches all in close proximity. These all failed on a layer of large surface hoar buried 45 cm under the last storm. Once we got back to the dense trees the skiing was amazing despite the cold.

Incident Report

We toured up through dense trees before the terrain opened up into an old wildfire that left an area of sparse trees and alder. We carefully picked our way up using the terrain and tree cover, but we did have one shooting crack as we toured. Near the top of the small burn we saw a natural avalanche on surface hoar fail on an approximately 36-40° slope. We decided to turn back from the sparse trees and steep slopes above the burn and head back down to the dense forest using a mellower (30-33°) opening we had taken up. We talked about exit routes and safe regroups before we chose to ski the main open pitch back down to the dense trees cover one at a time. The first skier triggered a size 2 avalanche in their second turn that propagated out to their left and was ~60 m wide and ran 80-90 m. They managed to ski towards the edge before being knocked over and were left on the surface near the tail of the soft debris. The skier was ok with no injuries and only a missing ski pole. Later we noted a size 1.5 skier remote as we left the meadows.