While skinning east along the ridge from the Guardsman gate toward 10,420, I passed Lane’s Leap and started noticing minor cracking in the snow. Curious, I stepped off the skin track and began breaking trail to test conditions, looking for larger shooting cracks or whumpfs. As I moved closer to the leeward side of the ridge above a north-facing slope, I got a loud, booming whumpf. A wind slab was remotely triggered about 100 feet away on a 41-degree, northeast-facing slope.

The slab, about 50 cm (20 inches) thick, released on the PWL and behaved as predicted in Meisenheimer and Wessler’s excellent 12/25 observation. I couldn’t see how far the avalanche ran, but I’d classify it as SS-AS-R1-D1.5-O.

While breaking trail, I experienced countless whumpfs but no shooting cracks longer than a ski length. A quick hand shear test on a north aspect at 9,500 feet (skier’s left of Lane’s Leap) revealed a Q1 shear 50 cm down on the PWL (see attached image).

Additional Notes:

-Strong wind gusts and intense blowing snow were observed around lunchtime.

-On a positive note, the denser storm snow has covered the deadfall well.