Avalanche: Wolverine Cirque

CJ

Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Wolverine Cirque

Wolverine Cirque

10,600'

North

Skier

Unintentionally Triggered

Soft Slab

Wind Drifted Snow

Density Change

10"

200'

I got lucky today. Many thoughts went through my mind today that influenced me into choosing to ski the Cirque, and a large portion of those thoughts related to what I thought would be "sick" or "fun", in turn pushing decisions I could've made regarding my own personal safety onto the back burner. I entered the Cirque via the standard entrance into Zoot Chute, made a sort of ski cut to the skier's left cutting underneath the main overhanging cornice with the initial plan of stopping at my island of safety (the sub ridge dividing Zoot and Roman's) before continuing down into the choke of the line. In the heat of the moment, I decided to ski the entire line fluid, as I didn't notice any instant collapsing following the ski cut. As I began to point my skis into the fall line, I noticed what I thought was slough flowing down into the choke from the looker's left side of Zoot, but could tell that I was ahead of it and could remain ahead of it as long as I skied fast through the rest of the line. Turns out that the slough was actually a ~4 inch windslab that released and ran at a slow to moderate pace. Right as I snuck past that initial cloud of running debris, everything below me fully collapsed. A secondary release occurred about half a foot in front of me (I believe the debris from the initial windslab and/or the force of me skiing triggered this) and I pointed it straight downhill, luckily outrunning the fast running debris. The crown on the secondary release was larger, somewhere around 10-12 inches. I'm not sure if this secondary release was due to a deeper windslab or if it was simply a new/old snow interface issue. All I know is that I feel lucky to have had this bigger part of the slide go off in a spot where I was able to ski fast and that I didn't get dragged over a cliff or into a rock wall. There were no signs of collapsing, cracking, or whoomphing prior to the avalanche, so the fact that things stepped down to a larger crown surprised me.