Despite availability modern devices on the market to protect us i.e. skiers, snowboarders, mountaineers from avalanches, we can't be sure about our safety.
There are 3 pieces of gear absolutely necessary while skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing off - piste (away from prepared ski runs):
- avalanche transceiver or avalanche beacon used to locate people buried in avalanches. It emits a pulsed radio signal. If one gets buried in an avalanche, other transceivers pick up the signal being emitted from under the snow. The receiving transceivers interpret the signal into a visual and audible display that assists the search.
- probe - collapsible aluminum pole made specifically for probing by itself or during the pinpoint search with an avalanche transceiver.
- shovel - essential for digging out victims and testing snow.
These items don't ensure 100 % safety. What more can we do to improve our situation in the backcountry?
We can use an avalanche airbag backpack - designed to prevent being buried in an avalanche. In an avalanche, larger objects rise to the surface, while smaller objects sink to the bottom. An airbag incorporated into backpack helps to rise to the surface. Avalanche airbag backpacks are expensive but worth investing. Ongoing studies on ABS packs by the Swiss Avalanche Institute have found that wearing an airbag can significantly improve your chances of survival. Since 1991, of 262 people who have deployed an airbag in an avalanche, 97 per cent have survived.
But there is still a question if we can do more to increase our safety in the backcountry?
"AvaTech seems to have an answer. It's a builder of proactive systems that instantly analyze the snowpack and facilitate real-time sharing of this information in order for individuals and groups to make better decisions in the backcountry.
New AvaTech’s SP1 device reads snowpack structure, slope angle, and aspect in seconds and then geo-tags the data, and uploads it real-time onto the AvaNet platform. AvaNet will dramatically increase the amount of data snow professionals can share and analyze, providing a unique geo-spatial database of crowd-sourced snowpack observations. Snow professionals will be able to gather more information and make better decisions with consistent data powered by this proprietary technology developed while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Finally, professionals will also be able to rapidly upload their own manual snowpack observations with AvaTech’s Snowpit Editor" (http://www.powder.com/avalanche-education/avatech-launches-new-product-featuring-instant-snowpack-analysis/)
Thanks to SP 1 device we don't need to dig a hole to check a snow profile. We can take as many proble profiles as we need because it is much easier and faster than in traditional way.
The SP1 has rugged construction with a collapsible 150 centimeter probe that folds easily into backpack and weighs approximately one pound. Additionally, the SP1 can be wirelessly synced with a smartphone and AvaTech’s AvaNet™ cloud platform.
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