Beacon Practice TR and Questions
So with all of the inbounds/out of bounds slides that have happened so far this year and with more people we ski with skiing rowdier terrain, myself, snowrider and our friend Laura decided to do some extra beacon practice today to be better prepared for worst case scenarios.
We headed over to near the high school and did some initial practice in one of the fields with shallow burials (1-2ft) just to practice with the beacons and then snowrider had a great idea. We left the field for the parking lot and used the long and quite tall plow piles as avi debris fields. We buried packs 2-4ft down and at different heights along the apex pile. It felt good to be actually having to go with your lowest number even if it was only 1.5 and probing and finally fully shoveling out. Using the plow piles was a lot harder than anything I've done on slope where the snow is much easier to dig through and isn't condensed, hard, ice chunk all packed and piled up.
We decided we're going to do more practice in the next week but bring it up to the Pass this time and play around in Telemark Bowl or somewhere out of the way. However per snowrider's idea again, we are intending on doing live burials of each other (loose burials of course). Has anyone ever done this before? We were going to have a spotter that knows where they are and has a radio connected to the radio of the person buried as well as a timer. The buried person will be loosely buried (ie. dig a hole get in and loosely place snow on top) and wearing an avalung. Snowrider had reasoned that not only would it be more life like for the search party but the person buried would get an idea of what it felt like and ya it would be scary but it might make them think twice of skiing something in the future. If you know what it feels like to be buried anxiously awaiting to be dug out you might not ski that steeper slope on a big pow day even though you think "it'll be ok" and instead take a more conservative approach.
The whole thing got me thinking and I wanted to hear feedback from others out there. What do you think of the idea? Have any of you ever done something similar? And in general, if you haven't done any practice searches this year get out and do them. It's been snowing a lot and stuff has already been moving, its better to be extra prepared. Plus as someone mentioned in another thread, check all your gear and make sure you remember how your shovel snaps in or your probe or whatever. Just little things that can be avoided by extra preparation.
Discus...
