Vail & Summit County
AvalancheAnonymous · Mar 29, 2021 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Strong 30 mph+ gusts, roughly from the W to NW, in the morning, tempered off to moderate wind in the afternoon. A couple inches of new snow from the storm the night before was providing ample snow for transport into wind slabs on SE to E to N aspects. Cristo Couloir is SE facing at the top of the bowl. Elevation likely somewhere around 12,500-13,000 at fracture line.
Avalanche
We did not witness the avalanche, only talked to the group that triggered it in the parking lot. The party of two described booting up Cristo, but ran into punchy and deep snow that made them rethink continuing further. They were on the climbers left of the couloir, and transitioned to ski down somewhere around 2/3 the way up. Upon transitioning and beginning to ski, one of them triggered a somewhat stiff windslab that fractured slightly above them and propagated across the slope (an undetermined length/% of slope, and only the new windloaded snow). Neither individual was caught/carried, primarily because of the relatively small size, and the fact that they were still climbers left of the majority of the path/slide. We encouraged them to report this slide to CAIC, but as I do not see it on the site 2 days later, I am simply reporting the incident as I recall hearing it in case it is helpful to any other parties considering similar aspects/elevations in the zone.