We were a group of four. We dropped one lap in George's and felt like there wasn't much new snow and decided to take a look into Bengal Tiger.

We discussed options while looking into the main north line and we felt like the obvious hazard was wind loading at the ridge, but with relatively little new snow, we weren't overly concerned with new snow stepping down to the wind layer. In the end, our plan was to cut the top of the slope as high as we could, get the new snow to run, and then safely ride the shot.

Rider 1 dropped in and cut the slope within a few feet of the cornice and as he passed the main cornice, the slope broke. He continued to ride across the slope as the fracture propagated behind, under and eventually in front of him. He was able to stay upright and continued across the slope outside of the slide path. The initial 1.5-2' crown (some of what you see in the photo is the initial cornice not the crown) quickly stepped down to older layers and eventually the ground.

The slide continued down slope through the trees and eventually settled about 1300-1500 feet from the crown.

One of the three remaining riders came down to rider one inside the debris field and they both continued down through the debris into the sort of dogleg left apron area of the run. At the bottom of the debris, they radioed back to the other two up top that they were good and those two went back up and over to exit via Cardiff Fork.

We ski cut this slope thinking we were simply dealing with 4-6" of new snow and small wind slab that we'd get to run and be fine. We let our guard down on the PWL and it almost had big consequences. This no doubt shook us up. We're all happy to have walked away unharmed.