Crowfoot Couloir avalanche

La qualité du hors-piste était:

Incroyable

Les conditions de neige étaient :

• Poudreuse

Nous avons parcouru:

• Pentes alpines

La journée était:

• Froide
• Ensoleillée

Three of us left our vehicle around 7:30 to ski the Crowfoot Couolir. Condtions were beautiful, broken clouds and the sunrise poking through, temps just below freezing. We skinned the apron and transitioned to boot packing at base of couloir, arriving at top just around 8:45. Snow in couloir was powder mixed with some debris from sluffs from the previous days. We saw no major snow movement except for one large sluff coming off a cliff to our south a couple miles above Crowfoot glades. Bootpacking was knee deep, with mostly firm snow underneath to kick steps. No snowpack instability noticed on climb.

Within a minute or two of arriving at the top and before we had even removed our packs, a significant cornice collapse or wind slab or just a large quantity of cliff pasted snow broke from the rock walls above the couloir. We were able to see it coming and had a couple seconds to brace for its arrival. We were only able to hold onto the slope momentarily before all three of us were caught and carried approximately 1,000 feet onto the apron of the couloir. None of us were buried but two of us sustained orthopedic and other minor injuries. One skier lost his skis and poles, the other two lost poles. Numerous items were lost, including a Garmin watch torn from the wrist. Our skis were torn from our packs. We were able to self rescue.

Thoughts: It was not a huge slide, maybe 1-1.5, but a reminder that even smaller slides can be catastrophic in steep alpine terrain. The morning sun hitting the headwall likely caused enough heating to peal off the snow above. The warning sign we neglected to heed was the large east facing cliff avalanche to our south, which was likely bigger than one in which we were climbing, the fact that there was sun hitting the upper cliffs directly above the couloir and the temperature was near freezing and probably rising.