Touchy Avalanche Crest

Touchy day on av crest. As soon as we emerged from TL the wind was ripping N/NNW with significant ridge top pluming and snow transport. Micro terrain features were sliding as we skinned up and some cracking from ski tips was observed. We noticed a recent slab that had failed in the past 12hrs on the backside of av crest (pic 1). While descending we noticed multiple small slides that had released on convexities. In general we were surprised by the strength of the wind and the extent of the recent wind loading. Based on this we chose a conservative line on the extreme skiers left, just inside the trees. At one point midway down we drifted skiers right and triggered a size 1.5/2 slab (see incident report, pics 2-4).

First skier dropped over a convex rolled that maxed at ~35deg. On the second turn the slab broke and he was carried, inverted and then popped up 50m downslope, partially buried chest deep but with his head above ground. The slab was 30-50cm deep, 40m wide and ran for 50m. It broke in the recent storm snow and ran on the mid week crust. The slab was soft and easy to self extract from, but propagated surprisingly far.