Avalanche: Tuscarora

I'm slow to get this avalanche report submitted but thought this experience could be valuable to others.

It was Friday, March 14th and it had just snowed 12"-18" at Brighton. The plan that morning was to ride inbounds but the night before there had also been discussion to potentially ride Seagull chute on Tuscarora.

We spent the first 3-4 hours of the day on Milly with some cloudy weather. Around noon it started to clear up and a couple of the members of our group decided they wanted to hike out to Tuscarora.

The avalanche danger that morning was considerable above 9,500' on all aspects, so some of the group was hesitant about attempting to ride that line. Ultimately, it was decided that we would hike out and if we saw issues we'd bail on the plan (i.e. ride safer terrain like Wolverine bowl).

After booting up milly and hiking across to Wolverine we did notice the sun crust beneath the new storm snow and talked about that being a potential issue. A couple members in the party still felt unsure about conditions but everyone agreed that we would go look at Seagull chute. After arriving one of the members of our party decided to first ride Chute X before anyone attempted to go down Seagull.

Three of us then setup at the top of chute X to watch the rider. As the rider entered the chute and made a heel side turn the snow propagated across the entire length of the chute, roughly 100 ft and 18" deep. We kept eyes on the rider as we heard his avalanche airbag deploy. This made it much easier to locate the bright orange bag as the snow slowed to a stop. We quickly radio'd down to the rider and he confirmed that he was okay. Luckily, he didn't get pulled over the cliffs on either side of the chute and the airbag kept him on top.

From there we felt grateful nobody was injured and rode back down the ridge line and took a safer route out.

A couple of learnings:

1. We saw / felt multiple red flags and ignored them. Anytime you feel unsure don't be afraid to speak up. 2. A ski cut would have helped us to avoid this situation.