Traveled widely in Main Porter before ascending Gary's Gully from the bottom. Elsewhere, we had obvserved that within the trees on higher north facing the snow was a sandbox, with facets from top to bottom and no cohesive slab. Onerous travel and reasonable skiing. Trying to reach the ridge above Gary's we were working up through the mature timber to the East (looker's left), being unwilling to ascend the more open slope to the West after recent reports of triggering from below.

Near the head of the gully, probably 50' below the ridge, I approached the edge of the woods and didn't like the thought of leaving them. I took a terrain belay from a small pine and started to step into a kick turn when the slope just above and to the right of me collapsed. I watched a crack propagate across the top of the bowl 50-60'. The snow broke just above me and about a foot to my left, so it knocked me off my skis but I was left hanging on my little pine tree friend.

Crown was 14-20", averaging 15-16". Crack propagated another 30' or so laterally but didn't release. The slide ran about 300 vertical feet, piling debris 5-6' deep against trees D1.5. It ran on facets atop a faceting crust. The upper slide ran up atop the snow surface mid track before stepping down again and releasing another pocket 200' down. A significant amount of hangfire remained.

This was a near miss. A small change in how we had worked the track lower down or where I'd chosen to turn could have involved either my partner or I in a consequential slide. Micro terrain management saved our butts, but my take away for the day was that if it wasn't for our macro choices, they wouldn't have needed saving. I'm glad to have gotten direct feedback without a lasting penalty. My approach to this problem moving forward is to put a hard red light on that high-Northerly terrain over 30 degrees. It's not a friendly problem, and it's better to ensure that we're not going to be wrong than to try to be right.

Photo 1: Skintrack entering crown with visible additional propagation. I was kick-turning around the small tree at left while holding on to it.

Photo 2: Mid-track, with flanks.

Photo 3: From the debris pile. You can see that the debris rode up on the surface before stepping down again. The debris also collapsed and released a pocket at the right of this photo well down from the ridge.