Our plan for today was to ski multiple of the memorial couloirs, starting with memorial 5. This is a fairly narrow couloir that doesn’t have a lot in the sense of hangfire so I felt it was reasonable considering the observations we made yesterday. We found a river of graupel running down the couloir the entire time and and sensitive surface snow on the flanks of the couloir where snow was running off the slabs and piling up. These little slabs were only a few inches deep so I wasn’t concerned. Hindsight, the amount of graupel in the line and the fact that it was actively running down the couloir should have been a reason for us to turn around. I don’t know why I didn’t consider that a red flag. Perhaps because I haven’t really been able to score on powder days this season and really just wanted to ski something cool in powder.

About halfway up the line the weather and visibility started to deteriorate quickly and we were high enough in the line that we were very exposed to anything coming down. Turns out Scott was questioning whether we should keep going up but before he could voice his concerns to me a much larger mass of snow came down and hit us like a truck. There was only probably less than a second between when I saw the slide and when it hit us. There was no way to self arrest and we got pulled down over 600’ to the base of our boot pack, and are very lucky the slide did not run into the exit gully down below. I was underneath the snow for the entire time until I came to a stop and was somehow ended up back on the surface. Scott was also on the surface less than 10’ away from me. I lost my poles and suffered a hamstring injury. Scott lost his poles, skis and glasses and suffered a groin injury and bit his tongue. However, we were able to self-evacuate.

The amount of snow that hit us makes me think a wind slab popped as the weather worsened and entrenched a lot of snow on its way down. The sluff acitivity we witnessed while booting up was pretty benign and didn’t have much energy. But without visibility further up it was impossible to know the full nature of the avalanche. However, in consequential terrain like a long couloir all it takes is a small avalanche to have severe consequences. We are very lucky to come away from this with only bumps and bruises and some lost equipment.