here is some new info for avy safety gear. this stuff is getting better, but still expensive. but keep an eye out, as price and weight come down, this will be the "must" piece of gear for everyone.
The inviting expanse of shimmering snow contrasts with the benign blue
sky above. The ski instructor briefly goes over the planned run, his
first charge glides off into the distance ... and sets off a slab
avalanche. The group all look on helplessly as their friend is buried
under a wall of snow. Bernhard Budaker of the Fraunhofer Institute for
Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA knows this kind of scenario
is all too common. But researchers at the Institute recently developed a
new avalanche airbag system for ABS Peter Aschauer GmbH, in which an
electronic unit ensures a ski instructor or friend of any similarly
hapless individual can remotely trigger the airbag stowed in their
backpack. The product went on sale in December 2009. Avalanche airbags
have been in use for over a quarter of a century. A simple tug on the
activation handle will inflate two airbags stowed in a backpack. The
massive extra volume they create gives the body additional buoyancy -
the skier is no longer buried under the snow.
To date, however, the problem has always been that skiers have had to
activate the airbag inflation system themselves. "If skiers fail to
notice in time that they've set off an avalanche, the airbag won't help
them," says Budaker. But now the IPA group manager and his team have
replaced ABS's manual activation unit with an electronic system, and
fitted a new trigger: "We've redesigned the activation handle to
incorporate a number of electronic components, so airbag inflation can
be initiated by other members of a skiing party as well. It will be
perfectly easy to retrofit all the old-style backpacks with the new
system." When the traditional activation handle is pulled, it creates a
pressure wave in the tube, which punctures a gas cartridge and causes
the airbags to inflate. In the new system, a pyrotechnic element is used
to ignite the gas cartridge. As Budaker explains, the electronic
solution offers the advantage of allowing all the airbags carried by a
particular skiing party to be networked: "We transmit on 868 and 915
Megahertz. The optical application programming interface permits
specific groups to be defined. Group members simply need to touch all
their handles together for them to become a unit." One option is for the
ski instructor to be designated the 'master', his charges the 'slaves' -
in this case, only the master can trigger the others' airbags.
Alternatively, all members of the group can be designated masters and
help each other in an emergency. The activation signal currently has a
range of between 350 and 500 meters, but this distance can be extended,
given that every group member effectively acts as a relay station - as
each trigger handle passes on the signal.
Source: Bernhard Budaker Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Good front pointing up the SW ridge.
Cruising up the west ridge of LD on some of the only soft snow of the day.
Making sure the skis don't blow away. That's the NE face we skied in the background. It would be great turns if one could find soft snow - probably a rarity up here.
We returned from the low point on the saddle. Much more skiable than it looks. The narrowest point is about 30 feet wide. At noon when we descended the south facing snow was pretty good, but much later and it would have been sketchy. A combination of softening crust, heavy powder and fresh corn. You never know 'til you go.
