Thanks for the great photos Jason.
This natural avalanche happened on Monday 1/26/2009 at about 3:20
pm. A group of skiers near Surprise Bowl on Goat Peak heard a
crack of some sort and concluded that it was a serac/ice fall.
There appears to be chunks of ice in the debris as well.
There is a large ice bulge at about 5800 feet on the western
aspect (just out of view from this photo) above Gulch Glacier. A
lot of people call that glacier Goat Glacier, but the official
name is Gulch. Anyway it looks like a serac or a chunck of ice
broke off and created this avalanche which started at about 5800
feet and carried down to about the 4500 foot elevation of Gulch
Glacier.
This avalanche is a great lesson for route selection and glacier
travel. This is one of the preferred routes to access Goat
Couloir.
Its interesting that there was also an ice fall at about 4000
feet on Chief Glacier in Girdwood Valley on the same day. I
wonder if the earthquake on Saturday rattled some new cracks in
some of the glaciers? Thats just a theory.