Avalanche Mount Judah

Personal ski day at Mount Judah and Donner Peak area today. Made a plan that involved stepping out into steeper terrain but avoiding specific locations where we thought we could trigger wind slabs.  

Observed scouring and wind effected snow on the hike up to Judah on westward aspects from winds last night, and moderate winds out of the north at the ridgetop transporting snow. Wildflower ridge and Mount Judah summit both have large cornices and chunks have broken off recently triggering wind slabs below them- new snow on debris suggests some point last night. Quick pit below Wildflower ridge showed light density snow at the base of the overnight storm snow, but did not suggest propagation likely- 2x ECTN on this layer. 

Run one descended planar terrain in between steeper slopes and went great so we transitioned to do a second. We approached around the south ridge threading between small steeper slopes planning to gain the ridge and continue west back to Mount Judah summit. We zigged when perhaps we should have zagged and the slope angle increased a bit- both of us felt at the same moment that it was steeper and loaded- right where we had planned to avoid. At that moment I observed that we had remote triggered an avalanche just around the corner where the slope angle increased. The crown was about 50' from us. We did not get closer to investigate the failure layer. 

We did a quick about face and retreated from the slope. For the remainder of our day we created larger margins in our travel from avalanche starting zones, basically skiing non avalanche terrain. We did not see any other signs of instability where we travelled, and did not see any other avalanches similar to the one we triggered. We did see many other riders getting into much steeper terrain. Perhaps we found the outlier location where surface hoar was preserved?