We left from the peak 5 backcountry gate with the intention of skiing low angle aspen glades off of the backside of the monitors, we gained the ridge and traversed south until we reached the top of nutty putty. At this point the visibility was very poor and the storm had intensified greatly, we were also concerned about the conditions being wind scoured on the windward side of the ridge which we had planned to ski down. We had a discussion about bailing and agreed to ski down the mellower left edge of the slope into nutty putty. We stopped several times to discuss the best possible route getting out and decided to make short ski cuts through a steeper section of trees in between lower nutty putty and the fin. We were eventually able to work our way down into the low angle trees at the bottom and were within sight of the sign banks at the top of daybreak which felt like a safe place to stop.
As our last skier finished his descent, we paused for a brief moment and were immediately hit by a large avalanche.
2 members of our party were caught and carried and one was not hit. One person was partially buried and was able to self rescue and the other was fully buried with only his boot sticking out. Both people were fortunately uninjured.
We were unable to determine the trigger location or the size of the avalanche. If I had to guess I would say that we remotely triggered a large storm slab much higher up on the slope as there was a significant delay in between us stopping and then getting hit. As for the size we were unable to see how high up it started or how big the crown was but given the 4-6 of snow in the debris it could have easily been 2-3ft deep and 100+ feet wide.
