Terminal shoulder

<p>My partner and I went up Terminal shoulder to have a little poke around and get a close up look at the extent of the cornice growth and recent windloading in the immediate lees of the couloirs on the N aspect. The sky was sunny with few clouds, the wind was light from south. The temperature in the alpine remained below zero, but surface snow on solar aspects became moist in the pm. We peered into several of the lines from the rocky knobs and into Ullrs from the uncorniced entrance. The convexity looked fat, and soft when pelted with snowballs and we thought we'd try to cut a bit of the cornice off to see how the slope reacted. We could visualize the runout and confirm it was all clear below. As we were standing on the rocks preparing the paracord, my partner stabbed his pole into the snow, triggering most of the cornice, the chunk was about 3x3x12m. Immediately beneath the cornice had been stripped down to exposed rock, but the skier's left side remained intact to the convexity, where it rolled out of our sight. Upon coming around to inspect from below, we observed the size 2.5 cornice/slab had stepped down multiple times in the track, down over 1m in the fan, propagating 150m under the cliffs to the looker's right, and depositing mostly in a depression under Terminal proper, with large cornice chunks still visible in the debris. In our descent from the shoulder, we met up with another party who had directly observed the avalanche and also knew there had been no involvement. We all skied some of the more conservative and non-corniced NW-facing lines on the looker's left of the shoulder. The snow on the polar aspect remained dry and the ski quality was excellent, producing only minor surface sluffing. To all of you who are reading this, cursing my name for obliterating this line before the time was right, well, sorry... but I do think that with a little bit of new snow, Ullrs will still be skiable this spring. It also gave us some valuable information on the sensitivity of cornices with the recent solar input and (along with other recent observations in the area) potential for step down to deeper instabilities, with the application of large loads.</p>

Avalanche Conditions

Slab avalanches today or yesterday.

Weather Conditions

Sunny.