Quick report
Today our party set off an avalanche in Left Gully. Brent Underkoffler, Stuart Hickey, Brett Protasiewicz, and I had been watching the incoming storm and eyeing the weather window with low winds to start the day. We knew once it picked up things would get dangerous fast but hoped to find something before. Going in we knew the upper sections of the bowl had developed windslabs in the prior 24 hours so with the added uncertainty of this we had already ruled out the top couple hundred feet. We should have been more aware of isolated windslabs. In the lower sections of the bowl there was 4-5” of relatively unconsolidated new snow sitting on top of solid bed surface. We knew there was a possibility something could release, recognized the hazards of our potential objectives, and discussed what would happen if something did go. The amount of new snow or lack there of paired with clear runouts below our objectives added greatly to this. This was not any of our average ski day. Though we had a strong team we in hindsight had a group of people excited to ski fresh snow during a not great snow year. We were all willing to accept the higher level of risk. We decided to first head up to the bench of Chute making continuous observations looking for inconsistencies and underlying windslabs. We all skied down from there without issue. Next we decided we would head into the base of Left Gully. We found the skiers left side to be protected and the skiers right to be wind scoured. The middle was similar to what we saw and skied in Chute. Brent, Stuart, and I headed up with Brett hanging off to the skiers right side in a protected location 1/4 of the way up. We continued making observations on our way up and found much of the same on the skiers right and middle. We should have continued checking the far left side but did not. At the base of the choke we started to find more consolidated snow and all agreed to turn back from there. I skied down first, the snow was enjoyable but firm underneath. Once I was clear Stuart went to ski next. He made a few turns and was caught in an avalanche. It was triggered from a right turn on the left hand side where we had not taken a close enough look higher up. He was carried to the base of the line and upon stopping stood up and signaled he was unharmed. He quickly skied down to me with Brett and Brent shortly behind. Shaken up, we all headed out from there. One of our biggest takeaways from the incident is that the amount of variation in the terrain which can create pockets of instability. These pockets can be overlooked with a few steps up the boot pack. One of these pockets is what went and it took out the new storm snow in front of it to the bed surface below. It’s hard to say if it was more consolidated on the skiers left from the new snow over night or from the previous 24 hours. Regardless, we should have taken the previous 24 hours into greater consideration and been more aware.