Avalanche: Turnagain

We guess the crown was 12-18 inches, propagated 70 feet wide, and ran 400 feet total. My partners think I was carried 150 feet. On the second lap we investigated the crown. The slab was 12-24'' of last weeks new snow. The bed surface was wind board. The weak layer was small facets and intact stellars.

There were many sledders and skiers accessing lots of terrain without incident. The ridge had 3 inches of fresh snow on top of 12-16" of new snow from this week. Our party of 3 had identified wind slabs as our primary concern for the day. On the first ski lap, we were tackling each bench of BBQ one at a time. I was the last to ski the final pitch before Seattle creek. I traversed skiers left of the other 2 tracks, into a more wind loaded pocket. I was hunting for a slab and proceeded to ski cut the top of a convexity. My first turn triggered the slab, which broke above me. I was initially knocked off my feet but stayed on top, stood back up and tried to ski off the slab (even double pole planting) but had no speed to accelerate off the magic carpet ride. I got a few cart wheels in before finally swimming like a scorpion till the snow stopped moving. I came to rest five feet from the flank still on top of the snow.

No rescue was required, but was I was limited on non-releasable tele bindings.