Avalanche: Neffs

We went into Neff's canyon for an afternoon tour at the Memorial Chutes. We decided to ski one of the more obscure lines (Memorial Chute 3-, apparently). We skinned to the base and started booting on the lookers right to stay out of the chute, the snow in the trees was like sand, very graupelly. We transitioned into the chute to continue booting and were greeted with more stable powder. We assessed the snow as we ascending given the steep booter. No signs of instability, stable bonding, no cracking.

We transitioned at the top and skier one skied down about 200ft to a safe spot tucked off to the skier's left. Skier 2 started the descent and about 100ft in a soft slab broke on the snow connected to the steep rock wall on the skier's right. He was able to easily ski out to safety, given the propegation of the slide.

The slide was about 6-12" deep, maybe up to 15" at its peak. The crown didn't propogate wide across the chute, but rather down the skier's right side of the wall for maybe 40-60ft. The bed surface was still soft, so it appeared like the soft slab broke in the new snow given the density change on the rocks (still no graupel). This is likely why we didn't see any signs of instability as our booter and assesment were on the skier's left side of the chute, and the avalance broke down the rock slap on the right. As we were exiting, we spoke with another party who triggered a slide in a different Memorial Chute (maybe #2). A party skied #5 without issue (we ran into them coming down on our skin up through the bushes). They mentioned dealing with the sand dune like graupel while hiking, but no slides.