Tent Ridge North Bowl Avalanches

Skied five amazing laps on the east side of Tent Ridge's North bowl yesterday (April 5). About halfway up the skin track for our final lap, we witnessed two massive size 3 avalanches simultaneously rip out the entire western side of the bowl, dwarfing the size 2 from earlier this week! The snow pack on our aspect of the bowl felt solid, but we skied our last run conservatively, a little spooked by what we just saw. The day had been chilly in the alpine, and there hadn't been intense solar radiation (just on and off pockets of sun, with the clouds constantly moving). It had, however, been very windy all day, with obvious snow movement up on the ridge, depositing snow into the bowl. Both avalanches appear to have slid on the deep persistent layer that's been causing trouble all season. My guess would be that the wind-transported snow may have been just enough to trigger it (already weakened by solar radiation during the warm weather and clear skies the previous day). The two avalanches joined up near the lower bench, and continued right to the valley bottom, wiping out the entire, lower skin track. The avalanche paths ran for about 700m, dropping over 300 vertical meters from crown to deposit. Looks like Tent is going to be out of commission for a while, unless you like skinning up (and skiing down) a big field of "cement blocks" to reach the upper bowl...A friendly reminder that danger ratings dropping to MODERATE is no reason to let your guard down! Stay safe out there folks!