Many winters ago, I headed up to Thompson Pass to ski with a newbie to the Chugach, but experienced from the Wasatch.  We were skiing up the north side of Big Odessey, but more toward Schoolbus, when it became readily apparent that my partner and his two dogs had different ideas.  We slowly began spreading out and soon we were focused on different goals and well out voice range.  The day was clear and the snow very hard with avalanche danger easily rating Low.  With winds in the forecast I kept looking toward the peaks as I entered the broad avalanche slopes connecting to the rock gardens beneath a craggy ridgeline. Soon the snow was too steep and hard to edge or skin. I stopped and strapped my skis to my pack and began booting into terrain that progressively got steeper.  I was soon racing my once ski partner far to the right for the high mark.
       Above, the peaks began showing signs of increasing north winds as the two inch dusting the night before began blowing around on the only peak directly above me.  I saw the wispy wind-blown snow obviously loading on a patch of hard snow no bigger than 1/2 a football field, a steep section of about 40 degrees that I had determined from previous measurements in the past. It was the only wind loading out of a mile long ridge and any slope within miles. I continued booting up thinking naturals are rare under such contitions and the isolated loading was from a light dusting. No natural activity occurring and Low hazard moved me upward.   But I still kept looking alertly up at that small patch of wind slab being born.
       After about 10 minutes of booting and glancing up,  I suddenly noticed a feint powder cloud and quickly figured I was in the wrong place at the wrong time!  The wind slab had broken and was coming at me.  Down it came off the slope, then channeling into the micro-gulley I was booting.  With no time to escape, I lay down on the hard pack as flat as possible to present as little of a profile to absorb the punch of  a quickly approaching powder blast guaranteed to knock me down,  hurtling me down the mountain. (This is my planned reaction to this situation rehearsed in my mind many times over the years)  I kicked my boots, toes first, lowered my face against the snowpack and tilted a bit to the side to allow my skis,  which were attached to my pack, to not stick out and allow the blast to yank me from my perilous perch.

 

    It hit hard and I held my ground clenching my gut expecting to be yanked from the slope.  Its was over in less than a second and I was still in the same spot.  I looked down quickly and saw the avalanche continue unabated for a few more hundred feet and then pile up in small terrain trap deep enough to have buried,  if not beat me up. That was enough for me.  I put my skis on quickly made haste back to he trailhead.  I looked for miles along the same aspect and elevations and saw no other activity except the one release that almost tore me from the slope.  I drove by it for days and the starting zone stood out like a sore thumb.
    Reading about avalanches over the years had reinforced the concept that naturals rarely occur that catch skiers and  skier-triggered slides are the more common culprit.  Had I ignored obvious clues?   What clues were there? Some minor wind deposition that failed to bond to the old snow layer.  I saw the slab develop and then release in a period of less than 20 minutes.  Naturals were not occurring.  No new storms.  The snow I was booting up was like concrete.  In this incident I could have moved over just a few feet and booted elsewhere, but perhaps I had become mesmerized by the swirl of snow on a singular spot of slope thousands of feet above.  It was a tough one to figure and have concluded that I was alert to obvious clues and had taken into account micro-terrain, in this case 99% of the slope was safe. I was under the 1%.
   The lessons learned were obvious and I beat myself up mentally for the mistakes for days.  I called my mentor Doug Fesler a few days later whining about the incident and he listened most attentively.  He told me to get my butt back out there and keep skiing.  Making a mountain out of a molehill seemed to be the issue mentally, so I sucked up my lost pride and have not been in or near a slide since that day 12 years ago.  It also goes to show that for those of us who spend 100's of days a year over decades in avalanche terrain making critical decisions, that the odds are good that someday you will make a wrong call.  It's very hard knowing that perfect decisions each and every time will not happen and that is the dark side of an otherwise thrilling life skiing the Chugach.