In Monty Python fashion, the PWL is not dead yet. We know, because today we triggered it on the second chute we skied off Banana Days/Belt. The crown was 6-feet deep, perhaps a factor of a wind-loaded ridge (though wind loading didn't seem to be the issue here), and though the slide "thinned out" to just two feet or so deep, it ran fast and long (700 feet). Would it have buried someone? Absolutely. Would they survive it? Maybe?? (Not the kind of odds you want to play.)

We skinned up the Banana Days ridge and skied the first chute without incident. No signs of instability. Skied gloriously.

We then went up and skinned a bit higher to the second chute (for those familiar with Banana Days, we were not yet to the chutes that run through rocky chokes). The entrance was probably a touch steeper than 35 degrees, but then "mellowed" to 35ish. We were all on radios, all planning to go one by one, etc. I dropped in and skied maybe 50 feet down, nicking a rock, and suddenly heard on the radio "GET LEFT. AVALANCHE!". I glanced up, saw everything above me breaking, turned left and got onto a small sub-ridge behind a tree while the river of debris flowed past me 20 feet or so to my (skier's) right. It kept going...and going...and going.

What triggered it? It's unclear, though it seems that when I hit the rock I may have punctured a shallow pocket, which reverberated up to the ridge, where it broke big.

It's perhaps worth noting that we settled on Banana because we've been up in Days over the last week or so and are familiar with the wind profile. We nixed a few other options due to worries over wind loading/slabs, and thought the PWL was slip sliding away but...no. It's still there. Yes, we knew it's mostly isolated to steep, rocky terrain (which is a bullseye definition of Banana Days), but we wrongly thought it was gone. It's not dead yet. Fortunately, neither are we.