tom diegel

Provo » Provo Canyon » Provo Peak

SE of Provo peak

8,500'

Southeast

32°

Skier

Unintentionally Triggered

Wet Slab

Wet Snow

12"

80'

200'

trying to exit provo peak area without getting kilt. we skied down a west facing line off the unnammed peak just to the east of provo peak, and it was.....uh..."punchy" (ie we were trenching). we triggered a point-release slide from near the summit of provo peak on a 40ish degree slope, and it entrained a fair bit of snow as it moved slowly down. We tried to get on a w. facing, somewhat-low angle slope to get off the peak and generally it worked well (we didn't trigger another avalanche, but were barely able to ski b/c we were punching through so badly that we could barely turn). down lower we got to a roll that went to maybe slightly over 30 degrees, and either skier A triggered it from midslope or - by his estimation -skier B triggered it as he shuffled toward the edge. it definitely was NOT a point release; it was a slab with a crown. It moved slowly enough that skier A was able to get out of the way by sort of comically straightlining at an equally-low speed, but the fact that it was heading into a gulley made for some momentary tension. Generally we realized it was way too hot and we were way too late, so we tried to mitigate as best we could, which was only marginally so. scary, and we all felt a bit dumb.

We had ambitions of simply doing a big ridge hike from hobble to bunnels, but slow going early and the heat wave pushed us down early. we had "variable" skiing off to the north and probably should have exited from provo peak down to rock canyon, but wasn't sure about the mousetrap down low and thought that the w. facing might not have gotten overheated by that early afternoon. we were wrong, but by the time we realized it escape back up was unrealistic at best, so we tried to keep slope angles as low as possible. but still got bit a little by a weird wet slab; point releases we expected, but not a full slab/crown.