Chris W

Salt Lake » Little Cottonwood Canyon » Alta Ski Area » Baldy

Mt Baldy - Little Chute

11,000'

Northeast

Skier

6"

15'

On the top apron of Little Chute skier #1 cut the small wind pocket which caused a wind slab to slide into the chute. It sluffed down a ways and skier #2 observed it stop about 100 feet down the chute. Under the slab there was a hard crust, (looked like a melt/freeze), and below that the snow had started to facet, but was still quite stable. Skier #1 jumped on the underlying snow 5 times to make sure that it wouldn't slide to the ground. We then discussed and deemed it safe to ski, so long as we were cautious and skied one by one, and there were plenty of safe zones along the way. On the way down we observed some cracks shooting out, particularly on the wind loaded NE side of the chute. We kept cutting the NE wall, causing it to sluff through the chokepoints. We never observed anything crack other than the fresh wind slab. Skiing was fantastic, albeit sharky with a couple mandatory airs. We definitely cleaned most of the chute out, and I'm not sure what the next skiers would think about the conditions.