Avalanche: Cutler Basin

I believe this was triggered by small chunks of cornice that I had knocked off while skinning on the ridge. I had watched them tumble down the slope for a few hundred vertical and stop. Nothing came of it, so I carried on, but after I came back down to the saddle, I was pretty surprised to see this large slide. Due to the substantial hang fire, I was not willing to investigate much at all. The upper crown looked to vary from 18'-30" and the far left of the lower crown looked like it was over 48" probably due to wind loading. The light was very flat all day, which made it almost impossible to get any good photos. Here is the approximate slide path from Google Earth. the light did improve for a few minutes at the end of the day, just enough to show me the extensive debris piles which flowed a good ways down Cutler Creek, and all across the east face. This was from earlier in the storm, as the debris was quite smoothed over from wind and additional snow.