Had been kicking cornice with my Level II class working our way up the ridge to look at yesterdays slide. Another party had already kicked the major cornices before us this morning. One of my students moved up the ridge from me and was approaching the next section of cornice, when we experienced a large collapse. The cornice broke and tumbled down slope, the slide triggered after the cornice rolled 75 vert feet down slope. It pulled back to the ridge and into the cornice in sections. I don't think you could have escaped this slide without very serious injury or death.

Weak layer was facets below early Jan rain/snow event. This has consistently been the weakest layer I've seen over the last few weeks of poking around this area. The slide quickly stepped down into the depth hoar/facets below.

This would've been an extremely ugly ride...lots of sharks down there

Comments from another observer - Van Dyken: You'll probably get quite a few observations submitted on this since this was a pretty popular zone today. Clicked that the OR show is going on when I saw a crew of about 15 at the trail head. Quite a few people out today. One interesting note to add along with my pictures is that my partner and I on our first lap kicked a reluctant cornice from a safe zone off the ridge with no result not 3-4 feet from where the skier remotely triggered this slide. We came up on the group that triggered it on our second lap and couldn't believe the trigger point was so close to where we kicked the cornice. From what I understand the slide was remotely triggered off the ridge. Obvious signs of a natural cycle that went down but visibility was limited.