Bluebird powder day in EV. Overnight storm loaded up the zone with a significant amount of snow, variable amounts, knee-deep and above in certain places. Headed off the grid for the first run with Luke and stayed clear of the procession headed up to Benchie. A ton of hungry pow hounds were out early and the carnival was on.

Came back around to the top for our second run to see how the combination of the rapidly warming deep fresh snow and the mass of skiers interacted. They didn’t play well together. West Wall slid naturally, pretty much the whole thing, below the first set of small rocks. Looked like the new snow on the typical crust that happens in the West Wall with the east facing sun hit and recent warm temps.

Tracks in left side of Benchmark, but debris running to the flats from the first gully left of Mushroom Rock,a small run but another sign of more skier triggered instability.

Tele Line had tracks but no activity that I could see.

The capper was Old Man’s. Looked over the edge of the entrance to see a track leading into the each of the first two gullies left of the tree line. Below, a significant debris pile ran beneath them into the flats and no obvious tracks out. Shit.

Headed down right ridgeline and found where we could safely enter and do a search of a majority of the lower debris pile. Probably happened first thing in the morning, but wanted to make sure we didn’t leave someone on our way out. Did a search of the debris pile with Luke and thankfully found no signals.

The crown was deepest on the skier’s left side of the second rollover gully by the small cliff, three to four feet of soft slab. It extended into the middle of the bowl and over to the outside of the CDC area, which had a small slab release of its’own under the cliff band. SS-AS-R2-D2 for the Old Man’s slide.

As far as I know nobody was hurt today, but the potential was there. Pictures will be up soon of what we saw.