Mnt Olds bowl incident

Activity

Skiing

Total in the group?

5

People partly buried with normal breathing?

1

People not injured (caught but not buried)?

1

People involved?

2

Terrain shape at trigger point

Concave

Snow depth at trigger point

Average

Terrain traps

• No obvious terrain trap

It was getting cloudy and colder when we were exiting from the zone. The incoming clouds prevent from good vision se we were making slover and bigger turns while descending. First 2 guys from the group of 5 made it down into the bowl. Then I started descending, halfway thru my run the whole slope shaked and went down carrying me on top of the big blocks of wet snow. I ended up on the very end of the avalanche, not burried, got my snowboard off and got out of the debris. One of the skiers that went after me got burried up to her neck. Still able to communicate and breathe.

After the first avalanche stopped, the last skier started descending to the burial, with that, he triggered another avlanche size 1.

We managed to get everyone out without any injuries and made it out to the highway.

Problem:

It was a end of a big day, the snow got hit by sun all day long with cloudy periods. When the clouds came out later it got cold really fast. Fast changing temperatures created tension in the snowpack.

Because of visibility we were doing big long turns, that created pressure on the snowpack. At one point we were two at the same time skiing down, which I believe was the action that triggered the avalanche.

Mistakes were made, lessons learned and everyone got out without injuries.