Observation: Turnagain

We skinned up the NE facing ridge of Sunburst on Friday 1/3/14. There were 13
skiers and riders ahead of us, all of which skied the SW face. We noticed no
cracking, collapsing, or whoomping during the approach. We lost sight of the
SW facing slope at around 1430, as we continued up the ridge. Upon our decent
at around 1540, we noticed a hard slab avalanche, just below a steep rollover
at around 3,100 feet on the SW aspect, that we hadn’t seen at 1430. It’s
possible that we remotely triggered it upon our descent, although we noticed no
signs or sounds of avalanche activity. The crown was approximately 1.5-3 feet
deep, between 50 and 75 yards wide, depositing up to 4×4 foot blocks of debris
200 yards or more down the slope, running on a bed surface that appeared to be
at, or very near, the ground. The slope had several skier/rider tracks on it
prior to releasing, some of which we observed within an hour before the
avalanche. Unfortunately, the lighting was too dark and flat to get a worthy
picture.