Anderson storm slab

Incident Report

Big wake up for me. Hindsight I did every thing wrong and hence the incident. Lots of learnings, of pure complacency. Was day 40 in the back country this season. 1. Very familiar with the area, didn’t respect enough 2. Bulletin called for considerable. We saw all the signs 3. Group was skiing cool lines, so I couldn’t just ski something mellow, it was mentioned ski that little cool line. 4. Group split up at top, I was on one side they were on the other (without clear line of sight of me) 5. Skinning up to the line, I had lots of slabs,yet still went 6. Didn’t communicate clearly when I was dropping in and didn’t get a response from my partners. 7. Slope was convex and much steeper than 35 with good 20-30 cm of storm snow on a south face. I had a good feeling it would slide and tried to ski cut, but broke above me and I had no chance, it moved so fast. Thankfully I grabbed some small trees vs my avy bag. Slope had long runout so bury I felt would be less likely, but the big huge trees in the path would have done some pretty good harm with the speed of the snow hammering me into them. Partners didn’t even realize what had happened, they heard my scream, and thought I had tipped over. I am very lucky I was able to hold on and let most of the snow pass me. A lot of reflections and still a bit shaken.