Clear bluebird skies, rapid warming, no wind. Below freezing but warming fast.
We skiinned all night from Jack Lack Campground. We reached the base of Three Fingered Jack after about three hours. We had our sites set on climbing and skiing the couloirs, but knew we would have to find a good place to analyze the snowpack.We got ahead of ourselves and didn't pay enough attention to the signs. Rapid warming, heavy windload from a recent storm, and horrible bonding. I dug around in the snow on the ridgeline we were skinning to look for potential layers but didn't notice anything significant. My skiing partner was ahead and was traversing across the slope. I was tailing behind poking my poles as deep into the snowpack as possible to look for layers. Halfway across the slope i began to get very concerned. Rocks were starting to let loose (rapid warmup) and I discovered a layer with my pole about 4 feet deep which was not on the ridgeline. I was getting ready to rip skins off when all of a sudden the entire slope brokeI was caught. I travelled about 400 ft in the slide and was buried up to Chest. Almost got sent into some trees.My skiing partner only travelled 200 feet in the slide and did not get buried.Very scary and I feel extremely lucky. Upon digging myself out, I realized that my ski binding toepiece broke. Volle strapped my ski to my boot so I could skin back to the car.