Headed to Box Elder today to ski the NE. Bold decision given all the avalanche acitivity yesterday.. I justified this by thinking we were dealing with wind slabs off the top and maybe some new snow issues, but thinking the new snow instabilities would be settling out. Once we saw the amount of wind loading decided not to ski the NE proper but to ski a protected subridge. Used a rope to ski cut a small pocket off the top. This produced an avalanche that triggered a loose dry below on the NE face and a larger connected pocket on the east face that ran the length of the face and into the valley below.
Perfect I thought as the avalanche ran down the face and entrained a lot of snow. We skied the upper portion next to the debris with a safe zone and bed surface to our left. We regrouped and were psyched. This is where I totally let my guard down. In my mind we were out of the wind zone... Skiing down through the trees on the skiers left we came to a small pocket of snow with a convex roll. I skied first and fell on the slope when my binding popped out.. My friend skied over the small roll to retrieve my poles for me, and pulled out the pocket.
I got flushed through a stand of trees and so did my friend, both of us ending up on the surface of the snow. Size D1 but with consequences. The interface was likely a mix of graupel and stellars that we observed elsewhere, but these avalanches were behaving more like a near surface facet interface... The avalanche was the second one on the slope.. I fell right on the slab and nothing.. I learned a lot today and will be reflecting on those decisions for quite some time. All physically okay just a couple of lost poles and sunnies. Weird season, Weird avalanches. I believe this problem will still exist in the mtns tomorrow.
