Burger Butte

This was an off-duty day, where I was collecting field observations for Eagle Cap Mountain Guides.  We had listed Wind slabs as our primary problem in our morning meeting and rated the Avalanche Danger as shown below.  I was right on the cusp of what we characterize as upper and mid-elevation terrain at 8,000', traveling on a ridgeline and observing an NW aspect.  The slope below me appeared wind-loaded and I was kicking loose chunks of the cornice to see if the wind-loaded terrain would propagate with the additional weight of the cornice chunks.  Unfortunately, I underestimated a portion of the cornice I was trying to kick free, and it collapsed under my feet and I fell off the ridge.  Upon impacting the slope I triggered a size 1.5 wind slab, characterized as a soft slab avalanche.  It carried me approximately 200' downhill.  When I came to rest I was on the snow surface, and some of the debris had continued below me.  

I had dug a snowpit at around 7,800' and didn't observe a slab overlying the facets that formed during the January drought.  Overall the structure was fair, with a right-side-up snowpack and I didn't have propagating results in my Extended Column Test.