Preface: It's always hard to write about mistakes you make in your travels, but I think doing so is always better for education and insight, so with that said. I choked on a big piece of humble pie today after 20 years of a fairly safe track record of ski touring. Skinnd up Pole Line, with the idea of looking at south aspects. We decided to take a look at Little Sup or Sup, realizing the wind had been blowing and seeing that on both aspects. We figured we'd take a poke and a look around. As we traversed ahead, some spots had wind loading off the ridges, other places just had nice soft snow, unaffected by wind transport. We got to the base of Little Sup and crossed a couple small, isolated wind slabs. We found ourselves further out from the ridge than we liked, and then discussed cutting back to the ridge and booting up the rocks. We thought we were on consolidated snow, or a bed surface, or really shallow snow with minimal hazard. Admittedly, I did not probe into the snowpack where we were. We spread out as best we could and started to go back to the rocky ridge. As the first in our party cut back, the slope broke around him and he nonchalantly said "avalanche". The second in our group was on a sub-ridge and was out of harms way. I was just about to the sub-ridge, but not quite. I saw the slide coming and hustled on my skins, but no dice............ Here's a photo looking up at the crown. It propagated from the first in our group up about 15ft, culminating in a crown with a max depth of about 3ft, but mostly in the 1-3ft range. It also seemed to propagate left and right, pulling more down from the initial fracture. The right half of the crown line in the photo below. I got hit and at first thought It was small and might be able to self arrest on the bed surface, but I looked up and it seemed to be just getting bigger. I got knocked face first, through my poles away and tried to twist out of my skis because they were clearly pulling me down. I failed to get my avalung in my mouth because I was clawing at the bed surface trying to not get swept over the cliffs and rocks below. Eventually the slide went over and around me and I was able to stop somehow, not sure how. My poles were gone, skis were off, legs and waist buried, face and head down hill. I could see one of our party was fine, but I yelled out for the other and heard nothing. I extricated myself and yelled again, then heard the other in our party. He was perhaps 200+ feet below, unburied, skis on, self arrested on the bed surface before the cliffs, he was able to get his avalung in his mouth right away. Aftermath, the first in our party skinning back up the bed surface.This photo shows the width of the slide, with the two skiers on the left and right borders. This photo is deceptive. The crown is at the upper right hand corner, the rest of what appears to be a crown is not. It's shallow snow that lured us out there in the first place, but we didn't pay enough attention to the fact that it deepened and was all loaded up like a trap. I call this the "RETARDS" photo. Look at what those retards skinned into, no wonder they got rolled. The snow leading into it was not wind loaded or slabby at all, but it changed quickly. Unfortunately we decided to turn around 10ft too late and got a lesson from old Mother Nature. Another retrospective photo. Again, the crown is not what it looks like. If you look at the slide patch, that will give you an idea of the crown width. The right border of the slide path was where we first discussed cutting back to the ridge, as that was where we first encountered the wind slab. Again, hindsight is 20/20, should have turned back right then, and not continued on that last 10-15ft before making a kick turn. The reset button has been pushed, we all got humbled. And although I usually consider myself conservative and willing to back off, today the decision to back off just happened about 15ft or 30 seconds too late, even though we all recognized the danger but didn't respect it enough. The consequences for going for a ride here are very high, and we were obviously very lucky. The turns out to the road were refreshing.