Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
We went up near Joe Peak north of Bonner’s. Rode sleds in, still a ton of snow up there. Hiked the summer trail up to Hidden Lake, and looked/scouted the bowling alley chute. Super windy. Snow “wasn’t quite spring” yet. Kind of a weird mix between spring/storm slab/rain crust winter conditions. Big cornice all over Joe Peak with recent ski tracks. We had elected to ski the chute with the ridge as a contingency. Climbed the ridge up towards the top of Bowling Alley chute and dug a pit about 3/4 of the way to the top on the same aspect of the chute. No red flags and seemed super stable. However-A very thick rain crust about 16cm down. The snow on didn’t move after two different tests, and seemed consolidated. Got on the summit about 12:40 and ski cut the top before we dropped in. Main concern was wind loading and wind slab. No movement from the ski cut and the line felt clean. Second skier dropped in after the ski cut while we all spotted. About 1/4 of the way down the snow temperature had changed dramatically and he took one turn and kicked off a slide that ran about 300 yards. Second slide triggered after he turned away from initial slide. Wet heavy mess, but isolated skier trigger. Skier heard it coming behind him and was able to ride away from it in time. Observations/results were consistent with forecast from earlier in the week.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Type
- SS
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 5900 ft
No crown. Had attributes of wet and storm slab mix. Slide 1 was about 40ft wide 300 yards long, skier triggered. Slide 2 was about 20 ft wide and 100 yards long.