Avalanche: Salt Lake Twins

In an attempt to avoid the steep rocky East ridge of Twin Peaks, my party of three dropped down onto the south facing slopes directly below the ridge. Our plan was to traverse around a sketchy part of the ridge, and boot up a chute/snowfield to the summit. My two partners had worked their way across a section of the slope to the base of the chute, one booting, and one on their skis. As I followed, slightly higher than the previous skier, I triggered a windslab avalanche, knocking me off of my feet. I slid with the avalanche for about 50ft before being able to push myself up and ski out to the right to a rocky outcropping. The slide continued on for about another 150-200ft, failing to trigger any of the surrounding face.

Although small in size, the ability to take me off of my feet was surprising. Thankfully it was isolated, and did not produce a bigger slide as the run out zone was high consequence. We had noticed a few other windslabs on the ridge, both on the North and South side of the saddle. I believe noticing these, and continuing on was a big mistake, and in this situation could have produced a much worse outcome.

We were able to trigger one other windslab of similar depth on the East face of Twin Peaks. We had approached from LCC skinning up Tanners, and did not notice any wind slabs or serious wind effect in there. We also didn't experience any slab or wind effect in lower Broads Fork.