Back on February 11, with explosives, CDOT triggered a large slide on the Widowmaker just down the highway from A-Basin. Most of the snow in the debris pile has melted now. The slide has left quite a pile of woody debris. The slide ripped out a lot of trees, most of them 4-8" diameter. There were a handful of large trees that were also destroyed in the slide. Because most of the trees were not very big, one can probably assume that this is not the first time an avalanche this big happened there. That said, trees grow slowly up here and I am guessing those 4-8" trees are at least 50 and maybe 100 years old. It has been quite a while since an avalanche that large ran down the Widowmaker.
