While ascending a couloir in upper Chablis Bowl called the Playboy Chute a LS-N-R1,D1+-S released from above and caught and carried me about 100' vertical. My partner and I were ascending, for a second time, a skin track that we placed up a recent debris pile where we thought most of the new snow had already slid. The slide initiated in a small hanging pocket in a larger cliff band about 200' above the chute. When it hit the very low density debris we were walking on, it gouged into and entrained more snow than we though was available. I was hit without much time to react and carried upright, on my side until the slide stopped. My partner was able to scoot off to the side and was not caught.

Most of the day we experienced surprisingly long durations of high PI rates causing us to amend our plan and choose less exposed terrain. As the new snow began to accumulate we began to easily initiate small LS slides in steep terrain and chose to scale things back. We carefully chose our route and used more protected areas but we failed to recognize a small hanging pocket that was difficult to see. The Jan 29-30 storm deposited about 12" @ 1.45"H2O in the upper elevations of the Southern Wasatch. Like elsewhere in the range, the initial part of the storm came in warm and bonded well to the old surface. A density change within the new snow was responsible for numerous LS-N-D2's in the Provo area during the storm. On the night of Jan 31, partial clearing led to the beginnings of a NSF layer that was quickly buried by another 3" during the day today. It is unclear if this layer contributed to the latest round of LS slides today but it was easy to identify in our pits and also reactive to easy taps with the shovel tilt test.

While our incident today did not have major consequences, it seems likely if the terrain was more complex this type of slide could have been much more serious.