Went back up Observation today with Kyla to have a look around and it turned out to be a good learning day that ended in a remotely triggered avalanche.
We parked a little south of Bow Summit and followed a skin track all the way up to middle roadside area. Winds were packing the snow into a slab and the previous tracks were rock hard. We noticed some avalanche debris under the bench to the looker’s right, looked like a small (but wide) surface release out of the rocky terrain.
We skied down to the skier’s right to exit via the main drainage leading to Bow Summit. As we wrapped around to the main gully I remotely triggered a size 1 avalanche from about 10m away. It was about 50m wide and ran slowly for about 20m before stopping. The crown ranged from 0cm to about 40cm and linked a number of barely buried boulders. Bed surface was stellers and skied pretty good.
The drainage skied good and could be used for access to the general area but the area between it and the area worth skiing is still very rocky. I saw Chris and Luke back at the road and they reported isolated slabs popping over at Bow Summit as well.
