Spent last weekend skiing around Liberty Bowl in fabulous conditions - 11" of new, light wind, temps in the teens, great stability (or so we thought). We hit many lines all over the basin over the two days and saw no signs of major instability, until our final run to the sleds at 4:30 yesterday. We dropped into the line all the way to the skier's left from the high bench below "Blue Lake Peak" (i.e., the bench below the B-day tour col), where there is a nice wide low-ish angle pow field (guessing right around 30 degrees) that terminates in trees and a drainage about 800 vertical feet below. We had skied the skier's right side of that same field twice over the weekend, once before that same morning. There was also a track from another skier on the skier's right hand side, so 5 total on the field. On our last run, I traversed at the top to the untouched left side of the field, at full speed, and proceed to rail pow turns unstopped almost to the bottom. I looked over my shoulder to see where my partner was, and was shocked to discover a fairly big avalanche coming up about 150' behind me. I was hauling ass at the time, and (lucky for me!!!) the avy was moving pretty slow, so I was able to easily ski down to the left into some trees, outside of its path. My first thought was that my partner had triggered it somehow, so my main focus was trying to identify any signs of him in the flow as it went by (it lasted a surprisingly long time). Within a few seconds, my partner skied within sight on the far side of the flow, which was a huge relief. When the slide stopped a few seconds later, it became clear that I had triggered it, likely when I initially traversed into the field, and had somehow managed to stay in front the entire time, blissfully unaware of what was occurring behind me (pics link below). A close call for sure. This experience reaffirmed for me that you can never be 100% sure about stability, especially when dealing with a thin snowpack with some faceted layers at depth. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure I triggered a wind slab at the top of the field, which is guarded by some large cliffs, and is a significant deposition zone for transported snow. That slab stepped down and triggered a more reactive widespread unstable layer. All of this is just supposition though, as I did not notice any slabby snow whatsoever on the run. It was "sugar" powder top to bottom. Be careful out there folks!
Pics:
picasaweb.google.com/1085432858599684297...HtwE&feat=directlink
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