Massive Mountain

This avalanche really caught us off guard. It was triggered the third time we skied the run. We intentionally avoided the crown area because it had an obvious windslab. The crown was above our transition point. One skier stopped half way down about dead center of the slide path in a treed area. Two other party members were standing near the transition point watching the second skier. The second skier passed the first skier and was nearly at the bottom of the run when a large whumpf was heard. As far as we could tell the third skier remotely triggered the avalanche, which propagated 200m up the slope to the wind affected area. The first skier heard the yell of avalanche and was able to move quickly to skier's right just outside of the edge of the avalanche path. The two at the top were outside of the slide path to lookers left of the crown. Nobody was involved nor injured. I have added two pictures before the avalanche to show our skin track and previous tracks which were completely wiped out. The crown was about 50m wide and 100cm deep. The avalanche then became wider as it moved through the trees. The weather had been partly cloudy with sun breaks. There was maybe a 10km wind at the col. The estimated temperature was -5C. The snow remained very dry on the surface and probed 40cm before hitting a very hard crust. There were no signs of instability on the way up and no previous avalanches on similar aspects (There were 3 previous avalanches on the east facing slide paths as we travelled up the valley) . We stuck to 25-30 degree N-NE facing slopes.

This avalanche really caught us off guard. It was triggered the third time we skied the run. We intentionally avoided the crown area because it had an obvious windslab. The crown was above our transition point. One skier stopped half way down about dead center of the slide path in a treed area. Two other party members were standing near the transition point watching the second skier. The second skier passed the first skier and was nearly at the bottom of the run when a large whumpf was heard. As far as we could tell the third skier remotely triggered the avalanche, which propagated 200m up the slope to the wind affected area. The first skier heard the yell of avalanche and was able to move quickly to skier's right just outside of the edge of the avalanche path. The two at the top were outside of the slide path to lookers left of the crown. Nobody was involved nor injured. I have added two pictures before the avalanche to show our skin track and previous tracks which were completely wiped out. The crown was about 50m wide and 100cm deep. The avalanche then became wider as it moved through the trees. The weather had been partly cloudy with sun breaks. There was maybe a 10km wind at the col. The estimated temperature was -5C. The snow remained very dry on the surface and probed 40cm before hitting a very hard crust. There were no signs of instability on the way up and no previous avalanches on similar aspects (There were 3 previous avalanches on the east facing slide paths as we travelled up the valley) . We stuck to 25-30 degree N-NE facing slopes.