Beacons

[Dru]

peeping

[jimmyo]

This is a no brainer. Use em. No doubt they increase odds of saving lives. But a beacon is only a tool, and therefore only useful if the user is skillled. If you practice at least every season, including multiple beacon burials, you have a good chance to find and uncover someone literally in minutes. While if you don't practice then you might succumb to a false sense of security that leads to needless risk taking plus that will cost precious minutes or more in finding and uncovering the victim.

 

Many places offer short avy safety courses. Gary Brill is the best known local. Don't know where he's holding court these days. But to be safe you need the whole package of education and training and experience and good judgment.

 

You know, I think I'm going to wear glacier glasses next time I type a post to protect my eyes from the assault of the graemlins from above and below!

 

Jimmy O

[mtngrrrl]

I bought an Avalung last year, though I haven't used it yet. I wear a beacon, and I know how to do a search. So does my partner. I'm hesitant to go out with people who I don't trust to do a good job in a search. My partner might not find me in time or I may die from trauma, but I KNOW he will perform a good search without panicking and saying, "Uh, how does this thing work?"

 

Like Fern, I expect to die if I go down in an avalanche. But that doesn't stop me from wearing a beacon and Avalung "just in case". It does keep me home more than I would like.

 

One thing I learned from search drills is that a probe makes a big difference in the fine searches. You could dig right next to a body without realizing it and not get them out in time. Probing gives you the spot to aim for instead of guessing. That saves valuable energy if you're the only one digging. Yeah, people will say "be careful not to gouge their eye out or dig into someone's face." Well, if you're rescuing me, I'd rather be a little mangled and alive than a gently treated cadaver.

 

And lastly, if my ski buddy shows up without a beacon for a BC trip, I won't go. They won't be able to find me; I probably won't be able to find them. Where would that leave us if something did happen? Guilt-wracked for years? No thanks. At least we can stack the deck a little.

[marylou]

On the tip about probes: in the avy class I took this week, they strongly advised in favor of a longer probe, in the 275-300 cm length. Sure a deep burial reduces the odds....but how suck would it be to have a dinky probe and miss your buried partner because the probe was too short. A longer probe is not a lot of extra weight or bulk, and only a few bucks more expensive.

 

Seems like pretty smart money to this BC n00b.

[JoshK]

MattP, good analysis.

 

 

Alison, was this class tailored to our snow? I'd be willing to bet (no real data here) that anybody buried that deep (or for that matter, more than a ski pole deep) in heavy cascade snow is either dead already from the impact or is not going to get dug up in time. To be honest, I carry a shovel and peep around here, but not a probe.

[thelawgoddess]

i have a probe myself, but i think not carrying a probe is not unusual. learning to pinpoint precisely with your transceiver may be much more important in the long run. in rescue scenarios where the victims had beacons it seems i rarely saw probes being used.

[marylou]

Josh: yes. I took the Level One from Pro Guiding. We talked about the snow in other places, but most of the talk was about our particular kind of snowpack.

 

They empasized over and over that beacon, shovel, probe are a kind of safety "system" and it doesn't to so much good to just carry part of that system.

 

That said, everyone makes their choices about what they think is important in terms of gear.

 

TLG, what about the deeper burial issue? As you know from avy raining/beacon practice, the signal looks different if the beacon is more than a foot or two under the snow. You *can't* exactly pinpoint it unless the beacons are practically touching each other. A probe's going to save you some digging.

 

I'm curious about the no probe or short probe thing....if you have one, why would you leave it at home? Is it a weight issue?

[cj001f]

I'm curious about the no probe or short probe thing....

If someon'es buried over 200cm (that's 6+ ft) it's going to be a bit before you get them out. Big advantage of longer probes is you don't have to bend over (but this only matters on probe lines - conduit!)

[marylou]

I'm not talking about a probe line. I'm talking about a regular situation where there are a few (2-4 people) where maybe one or two of the people get caught in an avalanche.

 

So if there is a burial and it's one of your buddies, you want to have a probe or what?

[cj001f]

I'm not talking about a probe line. I'm talking about a regular situation where there are a few (2-4 people) where maybe one or two of the people get caught in an avalanche.

 

So if there is a burial and it's one of your buddies, you want to have a probe or what?

Marylou -

I'm going to spell it out for you. There isn't much chance of you recovering someone buried over 6ft deep alive - per this

Interesting graph. Therfore I see the only benefit to a probe longer than 240cm for avy recovery as convenience. I always carry a probe.

[snoboy]

i have a probe myself, but i think not carrying a probe is not unusual. learning to pinpoint precisely with your transceiver may be much more important in the long run. in rescue scenarios where the victims had beacons it seems i rarely saw probes being used.

 

In practice scenarios, I have found it much easier, and faster, to pinpoint the final location with a probe than with the beacon. I used to not even own a probe, but after some practice with probe and beacon, I now carry one at all times. Plus, once you get a hit, you can leave the probe in and dig straight down to it.

 

On the question of length?? I got the 3.2m, it's good for feeling deep layers, and makes for less bending down.

[mtngrrrl]

i have a probe myself, but i think not carrying a probe is not unusual. learning to pinpoint precisely with your transceiver may be much more important in the long run. in rescue scenarios where the victims had beacons it seems i rarely saw probes being used.

 

In practice scenarios, I have found it much easier, and faster, to pinpoint the final location with a probe than with the beacon. I used to not even own a probe, but after some practice with probe and beacon, I now carry one at all times. Plus, once you get a hit, you can leave the probe in and dig straight down to it.

 

I agree it worked better for me in practice situations. And that's when we weren't totally panicked about a real person, a friend, dying. Imagine yourself in the situation when your pal is down there. Do you want to spend time futzing with your beacon once you've honed in? (Oh, we're in the null spot, oh now we're not. My beacon says 1.1 meters, your beacon says .9 meters.) Whip out the probe and do the fine search. You'll probably get a hit faster. Leave it in place and dig to that spot. I used to poo-pooh probes () until I experienced the difference it made during practice. Now I always carry it.

 

I also say this as a non-guide and a non-rescue professional. Like most people on this board, I do the best that I can with my time and learn as many skills as I can. If someone in the guiding industry or SAR trains with a beacon multiple weeks per year for many years, they will probably be better.

[joker]

Regarding whether a probe is worth carrying and whether you can pinpoint faster with just the beacon, the practice drills I've done where the beacons were in a pack buried 3ft or more deep, the probe made a big difference, especially if the buried beacon was in a funky angle (like vertical). It was surprising how far off you could be without probing. Enough to make for a LOT of shovel time.

 

Regarding probe length, think about multiple burials for a moment. You have to focus in on one signal at a time. You have saved a few ounces with a nifty new short probe, and you know you're right near one of the beacons, but your probe isn't finding anything. Do you probe a wider area? Do you now move on to the next signal, thinking "oh well, they most likely must be more than six feet deep (though I can't be totally sure) and they nifty graph shows that therefore I'm maybe probably dealing with a corpse here" and move on to the next signal? C'mon, what's the answer, time is of the essence! Besides comfort in probing in a standing position, a longer probe would help you make a fast call here.

 

By the way, http://www.avalanche.ca/accident/index.html has a different nifty graph showing something like 7.5% survival rate for burials of 6+ meters. Hmm. Please don't give up on me if your cheesy short probe won't reach me...

 

Same site gives some stats on effectiveness of beacons in finding people alive versus other methods, but doesn't give data specifically for the cascades. Might be able to mine some data at http://www.nwac.noaa.gov/nw04000.htm#US%20&%20NW%20Accident%20Charts%20%20%20Updated, if you do please post as it might be at least midly interesting, though I'm going to keep using my beacon.

[cj001f]

By the way, http://www.avalanche.ca/accident/index.html has a different nifty graph showing something like 7.5% survival rate for burials of 6+ meters. Hmm. Please don't give up on me if your cheesy short probe won't reach me...

You mean this one?

That's 2m aka 6 feet. I'd be interested to know if there burial data includes cars & structures. If someone's buried 6 feet deep you've got alot of digging.

[joker]

That's the one. Brain fart - I meant 6 *feet*, not meters. Too tired.

 

Dunno what their data includes, but don't give up on me anyhow, and think twice about short probes and probe poles (which also are hard to get into set up snow compared to a "real" probe). There's a first for everything (e.g. +24 hour survivals, etc). You may have enough time to dig me up even if I *am* that deep. You gotta figure that time and trauma are the factors that combine to create the low survival rate for deeper burials.

[Norman_Clyde]

Not just time and trauma. With all that snow weighing down on your chest you can't move any air at all. No different from having a blocked airway, or being underwater. More than 6 feet under Cascade snow I would bet gives similar statistics to drowning victims.

[murraysovereign]

Here's something I've wondered about for a while now. The technology already exists to build a beacon that can monitor your heart rate. If your heart has stopped beating, your beacon would transmit a different signal. That way, in multiple burials, the people on the surface don't waste their time digging up someone who's already dead - they can concentrate on finding the ones that still have a pulse, then locate the corpses later. As it is, you can spend a lot of time digging up one person who was already dead, while someone else who would have had a chance asphyxiates.

 

Thoughts?

[skykilo]

It would be pretty fucked if you had some snow between your beacon and your chest and your beacon gave up on you. Etc, etc. Sorry to trash your idea, it's always easier to bring 'em down than to create.

[murraysovereign]

The beacon doesn't have to be attached directly to your chest. Heart Rate Monitors for distance runners use a monitoring unit that straps around your chest, under your clothing, and then transmits data to your wrist-watch. Similarly, the monitor could transmit data to your beacon. If the force of the avalanche was sufficient to rip the monitoring unit off your chest through two or three layers of clothing, then you're probably in two or three pieces yourself.

[ashw_justin]

The insinuation is that we would abandon the method of always rescuing the first or closest signal detected, as I understand is the way of doing things now. The beacon is not designed to perform any search and rescue functions, nor is it designed to make decisions that should be made by the search party. It's just a locating device, and until it can make oxygen out of frozen water, I'd rather see it stay that way.

[fern]

the HRM idea is interesting. but orthogonal to the goal of

simply avoiding multiple-burial situations which for

typical weekend recreationalists just should not be that

difficult.

[murraysovereign]

But the beacon wouldn't be making any decisions. All it would be doing is providing a bit more information for the people on the surface, so they could make better-informed decisions. If the closest signal is from someone whose heart has stopped, and the further signal is from someone whose heart is still beating, wouldn't the rescue party then be able to make the decision to concentrate on the still-living person first, then go back for the other, and wouldn't that be a rational decision if you had access to that information?

 

In Hospital emergency wards, they call it "triage". It's the way they determine which patients to treat first. They don't just take them in the order they come off the ambulance (closest beacon) - they rank them according to severity of injuries and likelihood of survival (heart beat or no heart beat), and then decide which to treat first. Wouldn't an avalanche rescue party be able to make better decisions with the extra information?

[joker]

I'm with skykilo - sounds like added complexity to what is currently a fairly simple piece of technology. I wouldn't trust the recreational heart rate monitor technology (which in very limited experience - like 3 uses - I've found to be flaky even while on an exercise machine or jogging). Maybe there's something in the medical world that would be more reliable even in an avalanche, but I'm dubious, and cost would likely be a big issue.

[chris]

I know a lot of ski patrollers that don't carry a probe pole. Instead, they strip a basket off of their ski pole and probe with that. With radio communication, they rationalize that someone else will come with a full length pole if necessary.

 

I've used this aproach with a small group, by ensuring we have at least one pole for every two or three people. It will suck if the guy carrying the pole is buried, but it makes sense on the fast/light/short day trips in Low Avalanche Conditions (capitalized on purpose).