Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Pioneer Ridge

Pioneer ridge

10,100'

Northeast

34°

Skier

Unintentionally Triggered

Hard Slab

Persistent Weak Layer

Facets

2'

50'

1,000'

all #ers are guestimates from a top and side view Thought I could ridge skin pio to the dog lake sub ridge and ski it out w/out triggering a slide. Was wrong. Skicut at top released slab that continued to pull pockets of wind slab and most of existing snowpack to ground to dog lake flats. Didn't do much post incident investigation, no secret as to the culprit, needed to down climb a bit to stay back from cornices on subridge and avoid other possible unintentional avvies. No obvious other than overall poor snowpack structure instabilities observed on pioneer ridge pre avvy or subridge post Thanks to b right on patrol for offers of assistance and checking it out from the bottom. Enjoy your holidays in a thankful manner top view

side view

likely suspects