Close call at WA Pass 1-5-14

Pretty classic, NNW aspect-check, low snowpack-check...

... glad things worked out.

[We will have the trails broken for you by this weekend, unless you perfer total untracked snow/ Blue Peak area skied well today with a foot of new.The waterfall face rock bands lower down on the mountain were a bit punchy and there are still good sized holes around the rocks. Even hit a few.

Lower down, there is a rain/ warming crust transition below the powder that we could feel. 

Up high, Looks  like some  cross wind loading far skiers left below the walls. Could not see the cornice. Tested a steep wind slab over a hard crust and was suprised it did not move, but who knows really it was such a small, small slab.

If I can be of futher assistance,let me know.]

Above was the intel. FSG posted to you. It's from exactly where you skied ! We observed many crown releases on wind affected N,NE,NW aspects below ridgelines as well as sun affected rollerballs and wet slides from 1/3 through 1/4. Probably a good idea to ski one at a time with a lookout or leap frog from safe area to safe area. I took a ride in that same spot , similar conditions a few years back . Glad your Good To Go.   X   

On Dec 26th I was within a 1/4 mile of that slope, perhaps even directly below it. We saw where it looked like a previous group had been a few days prior. It looked like they had triggered a collapse with a one crack forming in the snow. We decided to dig and did one ECT on a ~25 degree slope that did not move at all. I then cut the ECT apart and did a couple of compression tests and had one failure ~8 inches down that went on the second tap from the elbow.
The second test failed at 8 inches on the second or third from the wrist. If your slide stepped down maybe that is the layer. I'm pretty new at this and we didn't stick around much longer to do any more digging. I'm glad to hear you were alright.

On Dec 26th I was within a 1/4 mile of that slope, perhaps even directly below it.  We saw where it looked like a previous group had been a few days prior.  It looked like they had triggered a collapse with a one crack forming in the snow.  We decided to dig and did one ECT on a ~25 degree slope that did not move at all.  I then cut the ECT apart and did a couple of compression tests and had one failure ~8 inches down that went on the second tap from the elbow. 
The second test failed at 8 inches on the second or third from the wrist.  If your slide stepped down maybe that is the layer.  I'm pretty new at this and we didn't stick around much longer to do any more digging.  I'm glad to hear you were alright.

You could be right about the layer. We dug around a bit at the beginning of the weekend, and more thoroughly the weekend before. We were aware of several faceted layers in the snowpack, but we couldn't trigger a reaction with skis anywhere no matter how much we tried (e.g., via ski cuts or at switchbacks while skinning, etc.). That's what made the substantial propagation so surprising. Unstable layers at depth are pretty difficult to predict. Can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I wouldn't want to be a heli guide up there right now.

FSG, (and all Wash Pass skiers):  Good2Go messaged me that his slide "took out" the skin track that you and I avoided on Friday.  I talked with a member of the team that set it on the phone tonight.  I'm agreein' that folks are spending too much time exposed.  Whatever the destination is, putting the original, main uptrack in the safest, then easiest (often not the fastest or most direct) location is going to be more and more important as we see increased use.  Our uptracks here get reused frequently and we don't get many dumps that erase uptracks.  Hopefully we can avoid the Mt Baker syndrome here. 
On Sunday we "met" two new valley transplant couples.  I guess continued mentoring is still "on our plate".

Perhaps this thread should have been in the Weak Layers section and I'll try to post something similar there. The most important point here is the most likely aspect to go wrong: When a skin track is in "threatened terrain" where a skier triggered slide is reasonably possible, AND "line-of-sight" communication is absent. In a remote location, a single team could do this MAYBE. In popular areas it should be a no-go or a "set a new uptrack" condition. If you cannot see if anyone is following your exposed uptrack how can you ski onto the slope that threatens them? If you are following a track into threatened terrain how can you risk having the track-setter bury you?
Hopefully we can get this through to the less aware folks. We have a lot of terrain that fits here in the N Cascades!

mt. baker syndrome is a nice way to term the uphill/downhill interaction and congestion.
b