Avalanche: Aspen Grove

My group of 3. Were going for our second lap. Our first lap was lower angle slightly North East aspect. Snow was soft and skied fast great turns.

We decided to head up to Bob's Knob and ski something a bit steeper for our second lap.

At the top we talked normal caution one of the group elected to go be a spotter, we knew stepping up in steepness meant extra safety steps. With the spotter in a safe spot with a good view, I dropped in first and in the lower angle of the start I tried to get a feel for the snow. As I made a turn just above where it rolls over I got a good look at the slope below, and heard a bit of a whump, but thought it was the sound of my turn.

As I was cresting that turn and was about to point them down slope and really open up the throttle. That's when the slide which had broke about 30 ft above me took my feet out.

My initial thought was "oh shit this is it". But at the same time I knew I had just got a good look at the slope below me there were trees or rocks that I was going to get dragged through or over. I noticed I was staying on top of things. I initially tried to dig my edges in to stop, but that caused snow to start piling behind me around my shoulders. So I let myself be pushed down slope just a bit and instead of trying to stop I used my edges to angle me in a traverse out across the slide path to try and get to the sides.

I was eventually able to stand up and we regrouped and talked about our separate perspectives there for a minute and talked about our best exit decision at that point.

After we were down and found safety we discussed the incident among ourselves talked about decision errors we made or where we could have better assessed the slope before wrapping up the steepness.

It would have been smart of us to dig a pit. Thankfully no injuries and we had the best outcome of the worst case scenario.