Long time follower first time submitter. Bear with me -

Partner and I went to ski the Y yesterday. Arrived at TH around 5:45am with 2 parties before us. We had been monitoring winds and temps and generally weren't too concerned about the above parties.

about 700' up the couloir, we noticed significant soft wind drifts on either side of the chute. The party above us has consequentially set the booter right up the middle to avoid the soft wind drifted snow. We climbed about another 100' before stopping to do a snowpack evaluation. We found a 2-3" hard wind slab resting on at least 6" of grauple. We pulled over to the side of the couloir and noticed a crack had begun propogating from underneath a rocky outcropping.

At this point, chunks of ice (assuming from the party above us) began hurdling down the couloir towards us. With wind drifts on either side and a booter up the middle of the chute, we determined this was no longer a particularly safe objective for the day.

Our conclusion was that we could realistically probably ski this couloir without triggering an avalanche, but how much of our safety would be attributed to luck?