Disappointed to report another unintentional skier triggered avalanche today in Mineral Fork, BCC on Mongo No. Could either be a soft slab (SS) or hard slab (HS) I can not come to a conclusion for sure. While it did have some blocky avalanche debris, I cannot confirm that the slab was 1F or harder. I will call it a SS-ASu-R2-D2 that failed on what appeared to be 1.5mm facets on a North aspect at about 10k. Around 100ft wide, ran about 700ft and the crown depth was up to 3ft. Due to it breaking into old faceted snow we believe it was a Persistent Slab.

On the drive to LCC we made persistent slabs our number one concern today in the terrain we were traveling. We looked past a number of warning signs. These included finding a thin rocky snowpack on the entrance (facets), the fact that Mongo No had already slid this year, and seeing many avalanches on similar aspects and elevations. (Although we categorized those as storm/wind slabs that likely lost the energy by today.) We counted eight avalanches just from our view from the top of Mongo No. Just that alone should have kept us on more conservative terrain. We though that the structure was better than it was, and that there was less energy in the snowpack. We were wrong, the structure in that spot and I assume in many other rocky areas in Mineral was weaker than we figured. This was also our third run of the day and I feel we had too much confidence brewing. Triggered from the skiers right flank of the slide.

I was able to ski off the slab and out of harms way but the side was in unforgiving terrain and I was lucky. Booted up and out of that terrain and went down a lower angle slope that had a fatter and stronger snowpack where we stayed the rest of the day. Credit goes to UAC for the accurate forecast of persistent slab problem on high east aspects for the morning of 3/4/15. ​