Category: Avalanche

avalanche rescue tips, tricks & techniques

Bruce Tremper on Deaf-to-Danger Newbies

We just don’t have the resources to combat all the extreme videos that are out there…all these movies that are encouraging people to go out there and just rage. — Bruce Tremper Last January 2014, at the annual Outdoor Retailer Winter show Verde PR teamed up with Emerald Expo to convene a panel of industry …

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Low budget, lightweight ‘clinometer

  Knowing the angle of the slope you’re on is important for bragging rights and avoiding avalanches. There are plenty of options available for measuring slope angle, with price usually providing an indication of accuracy. There is a new slope angle estimator heading to market that is a simple sticker that you apply to your …

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Review: Buried  by Ken Wylie

  Book signings are not the sort of thing to make headlines much, but the subject of Ken Wylie’s book entitled Buried is about his contribution and assessment of what is arguably the biggest headline in avalanche news in a hundred years, the tragedy on Tumbledown Mountain, January 20th, 2003. Seven people died in one …

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Technique: Range set up for testing avy beacons

  How do I test avy beacons, more properly known as avalanche transceivers? What follows is my range set up, some notes and illustrations for newbies to understand basic terminology and concepts, and my general procedures. From an overall perspective, I’m just going through some predefined motions to test limits. In terms of the real …

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Technique: Dealing with bouncing avy beacons

Anyone who has practiced even a smidgen with their digital avalanche transceiver has noticed a bit of digital bounce. What is meant by this term is the error in the distance reading of an avalanche beacon. It shows up as the distance reading changing with each update, up and down around a number that, at …

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Awesome April is here

  This is the time of year when the wannabes fall away. Spring – when the snow alternates within hours from cold smoke to mashed potatoes. It’s the time of year when it’s icy in the morning, velvet corn in the afternoon. With the right conditions the weather warms for the day while the sun …

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Project Zero launches Know the Snow Contest

  A recent post by a friend on Farcebook made me realize there are still an awful lot of people unwittingly relying on luck for survival when they head out of bounds for fresh tracks. He did a quick survey at the OB gate and found less than 10% of those going out had basic …

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