The Rose Canyon area is a neighborhood with large, semi-rural lots. The area experienced high south winds the day before (Friday, 1/27), and resulting in large wind drifts throughout the neighborhood. I live in the neighborhood, and we usually don't get enough snow to ride or ski over the rocks. Since we have so much snow this year, I thought I would try to ride the north facing slope down from Step Mountain at the end of my street. I chose to hike to the top of the ridge just east of Step Mountain and snowboard down the north-facing slope. This slope looked like it had enough snow for me to ride over the rocks.

I hiked up to the ridge with my dog, strapped on my board, and called my wife to have her record me riding down the slope. As I started riding down, I hooted and hollered a little. I heard a soft sound almost like the rustling of leaves, and looked to my left to see a large area of snow sliding down the slope. It almost looked like molten lava flowing down the mountainside. Once I realized what was happening, I looked above me and around me - thankfully nothing above me was sliding. Once the avalanche stopped, I called my dog and rode down to the bottom. I felt very lucky that I chose to ride just 100 or so feet to the east of where the slide occurred, and not right on it. I was also glad that the avalanche did not hit my neighbors houses.

My wife got half of the avalanche on video, and didn't realize the avalanche was there until she was watching the video after all was said and done. By inspecting the video, it looks like it was a big wind drift on the down-wind side of the ridge that broke loose.