Avalanche: Lookout Peak

There was another report filed on this same slide on 01/16/16 by Chris Evans one of the people who helped me out. I am thankful for that.

I was skiing the skiers right side of the comma bowl tight to the trees which has a more gentle slope, about 32 degrees. further to the left the slope angle gets up to 35 to even 37 degrees, which is where the photo shows the slide broke out. I skied the entire steeper part of my run in dry powder and was turning on the flatter portion of the run (25 degrees) when i was hit from behind first with soft snowballs then i heard the rush of the avalanche. I made a last turn to the left before i was hit, which fortunately got me out of the middle of the slide path. The slide took both skis off instantly and i began to swim, always able to see daylight. the slide carried me only 50 to 75 feet before it stopped. i ended up with my head and arms above the snow and unhurt. The tong of the slide stopped about 100' below me.

I yelled for my partner John who yelled back. We thought we were alone, but with 5 minutes a party of two other skiers appeared out of the trees to the skiers right, then 5 minutes after that a party of 5 appeared.

My belief is that the slide was remotely triggered by myself once i skied the steeper part of the run as my partners skied to my right and more in the trees. I don't know what the role of other parties skinning above might have played. if they were skinning in the same up track that my partner had set there would have been no possible chance that they could have triggered the slide.

Thanks to the assistance of the two parties i was able to get out of the situation, with one person bring a pair of skis down that i could skin up the up track and two other friends relaying a pair of skis up from a friend in Pinecrest. My partner and i did manage to ski on one ski off the top 500 vertical of lookout and then waited for the rescue skis to get to us.