Police say avalanche beacon didn't work in fatal slide

<From the Seattle PI>

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NELSON, British Columbia -- An emergency beacon failed to work after a man was caught in an avalanche and died, and Royal Canadian Mounted Police want to know why.

The beacon was found strapped to the torso of Michael Duffy, 36, of San Francisco, who died Jan. 30 when he and 14 other skiers and snowboarders were hit by a slide in the Valhalla Mountains west of this southcentral British Columbia town.

Searchers, hampered by the lack of a locator signal, found Duffy's body Thursday in about four feet of debris, police Constable Heather Macdonald said.

A female companion was buried about as deep but was located quickly because her beacon worked, and she was dug out by a guide a few minutes after the accident.

Police said an autopsy would be conducted to determine whether Duffy suffocated or died of injuries from the slide.

Duffy's device was turned on, had a properly charged battery and had been checked by guides, "but it looks like there was some kind of equipment failure because it was not transmitting," she said. "We'll be looking into the reasons why."

The beacon will be sent to an electronics laboratory for testing, police said.

Macdonald said two guides and a party of 13 skiers and boarders had just finished their first run of the day when the slide began high above them in an area known as Russell Bowl. The slide traveled about a mile and measured 3.5 out of 5 on the avalanche scale.

Duffy's body was found about 265 feet from where he is believed to have been caught by the slide.

wow...tragic.

I wonder what beacon it was and what the heck could have gone wrong with it.

From a previous thread on beacons it was mentioned that there's no specific spec for beacons. They just meet general consumer electronics guidelines for temperature and vibration. I haven't seen any life cycle or test to destruction tests either. Maybe somebody should.

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Originally posted by Tyrone Shoelaces
wow...tragic.

I wonder what beacon it was and what the heck could have gone wrong with it.

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Yah, 10-4. Hopefully we get some good info on this when the analysis is done:eek:

RIP. 14 skiers in an avalanche zone (or runout zone) with guides, what? So tragic, it will be interesting to read more of this as it develops. This reiterates that of utmost importance is to not to get caught in a slide in the first place. If you do, survival has a lot more to do with luck than skill and equipment.

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Originally posted by Ireallyliketoski
This reiterates that of utmost importance is to not to get caught in a slide in the first place. If you do, survival has a lot more to do with luck than skill and equipment.

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Although continuing to practice with your beacon might not be such a bad idea... ;)

Well prepared and to no avail, most unfortunate.

That certainly pokes some holes in my beacon confidence level. :(

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Originally posted by InspectorGadget
Well prepared and to no avail, most unfortunate.

That certainly pokes some holes in my beacon confidence level. :(

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I don't think that anyone's beacon confidence should be too high to begin with, I've heard stats from snow courses saying that for successful rescues only about 20% of those are from beacon rescues and the other 80% are from visual clues. In other words if you are completely buried (no visual clues) you only have about a 20% chance of surviving the slide. Granted you can spin statistics a thousand different ways but I think that this reiterates that luck plays the biggest role in your survival chances if you are caught.

But I agree practice is the best thing that you can do to up those chances. So keep practicing!

I have always assumed the beacon works. I think it's time to start testing the tranmission in addition to testing ability to locate. It would be a quick check, could be done a couple times each season.

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Originally posted by grrrr
I have always assumed the beacon works. I think it's time to start testing the tranmission in addition to testing ability to locate. It would be a quick check, could be done a couple times each season.

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I was always taught prior to each trip to test both transmission range and locating ability for all beacons in the group. Can be done at the trailhead, you search me, I search you. This helps determine the beacon's range which can vary from day to day based on a variety of factors, the beacon's range can then help to determine the size of the search path that you need to do in case of a burial.

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Originally posted by grrrr
I have always assumed the beacon works. I think it's time to start testing the tranmission in addition to testing ability to locate. It would be a quick check, could be done a couple times each season.

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Or you could do it every day on the skin track. That way you could also check that everyone remembered to turn thiers on & has good batteries. I used to do that all the time but in recent years have not done it regularly.

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Originally posted by Snow Dog
destruction tests

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I saw some tests somewhere a couple years ago. I am not sure where, it may have been over at the old place?

As they (avalanche freakos) talked on the telemark and couloir forums , the beacons have tendecy to "loose" their frecuency as the time passes. Didnt find the link now, but remember vaguely that some *inser brand name* transceivers lost their frequency +/- 50 to 100hrz in few years. At least Pieps (or some other brand...) has a service where they re-calibrate the crystall after few years use. Absolutely no idea if that kind of thing has happened in this case...
Also, couple of years ago, friend of a friend of a friend had a high speed crash in deep snow. No injuries or anything. After couple of days, he found out that his transciever RECIEVED signals, but didnt transmit (at leas no one could read his transciever)..
...end of my rant...

..pfft..


Edit: BCA (if i remember right..too much wine..yes,im a wine lover too..) test their beacons dropping to concrete from 3m. And soaks them in liquids too.

And as someone mentioned couple of posts below, the particular beacon that seized to function after the avalanche was a ortovox m-1, its clip in system that activates the beacon got broken. correct if im wrong..

Would you expect any electronic device to work after bashing it against a rock. With a slide this big the forces placed on the his beacon could have been huge.

Beacons should be checked frequently. I had problems with my Tracker recently. I have to say BCA was great at standing behind there product.

http://www.epicski.com/cgi-bin/ultim...c;f=8;t=000270

With the Castle Peak accident--I think--the batteries went dead before the victim could be located (it took days). But a year or two ago a guy died in Jackson when his beacon was damaged in the slide that buried him. I have seen a beacon rendered inoperable after being dropped on the floor of a hut.

Shredhead- I agree that the forces experienced in this slide were huge--wasn't it a class 3? However, IMO, the next step for beacon manufactures is a more durable beacon. They should be like the black box on an airplane--you can hit them with a hammer, set them on fire and put out the flames with a mixture of Coca-Cola and vinegar and it will still transmit. (A degree of exaggeration has been employed for effect.)

Spamhead- I read the same thread on TTips, good info on why you should retire that Pieps you bought during the first Bush administration.

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Originally posted by Ireallyliketoski
I've heard stats from snow courses saying that for successful rescues only about 20% of those are from beacon rescues and the other 80% are from visual clues. In other words if you are completely buried (no visual clues) you only have about a 20% chance of surviving the slide.

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Your logic is flawed.

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Originally posted by grrrr
I have always assumed the beacon works. I think it's time to start testing the tranmission in addition to testing ability to locate. It would be a quick check, could be done a couple times each season.

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Uh. Isn't that what you're doing at the trailhead with your friends? A beacon check?

drC

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Originally posted by Ireallyliketoski
I've heard stats from snow courses saying that for successful rescues only about 20% of those are from beacon rescues and the other 80% are from visual clues. In other words if you are completely buried (no visual clues) you only have about a 20% chance of surviving the slide.

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I think it's lower than that. Around 25% of av fatalities are trauma related, so you start off with a chance of being in that 75% group of people who are buried but possibly rescued. Then you factor in the whole 20% completely buried (no clues).

Yikes.

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Originally posted by 365wp

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Originally posted by Ireallyliketoski
I've heard stats from snow courses saying that for successful rescues only about 20% of those are from beacon rescues and the other 80% are from visual clues. In other words if you are completely buried (no visual clues) you only have about a 20% chance of surviving the slide.
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I think it's lower than that. Around 25% of av fatalities are trauma related, so you start off with a chance of being in that 75% group of people who are buried but possibly rescued. Then you factor in the whole 20% completely buried (no clues).

Yikes.

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The (tiny, miniscule, negligable) statistician in me is cringing.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and he's not big enough to go into details),
d.

There's clearly some bad math in this thread.

What per cent of people who get buried in slides die?

A similar arguement took place last year when Steve Haas was killed poaching Hourglass at Jackson last year. I wrote a few letters to the editor of the Jackson Hole News and Guide. Of course, I was grossly misquoted.

Shock in electronics is a problem that is considered when making all consumer electronics. I've studied this extensively as my career dictates it. Avalanche Transceivers are built pretty rugged, but sometimes, freak things happen.

A visiual clue is not necessarily a hand or foot sticking out of the snow. Visual clues include skis, poles, backpack, touque....., stuff hat was with the victim when the avalanche hit him. His gear will generaly travel at the same speed thereby giving a clue as to where to start looking.

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Originally posted by iceman


What per cent of people who get buried in slides die?

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And the iceman pulls out the crucial question...

Sick and ashamed and happy (and thinking that, among this mathematical nitpicking, I should acknowledge the tragedy of the event :( ),
d.

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Originally posted by iceman
What per cent of people who get buried in slides die?

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This is probably what your looking for:
http://www.bcaccess.com/pdf/CompanionRescue_Atkins.pdf
32% of amateur transceiver searches were "succesful" i.e retrieved someone who lived.
58% of professional (ski patrol, etc.) transceiver searches were "succesful" i.e retrieved someone who lived.

If your at all interested in avy safety, read the tech report section of BC Access's website.

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Originally posted by bad_roo
Your logic is flawed.

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I don't doubt it, I was speaking from a very bad memory, I lack that.

Edit - what were we talking about?

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Originally posted by iceman
What per cent of people who get buried in slides die?

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That depends on how deep and for how long the vic is buried. And of course what you mean by burial.

The magic numbers are 30 minutes burial time and burial in less than 12 ‘ of snow. 50% of vics will die after 30 minutes under the snow. Swiss and US statistics show that burial under more than 7’ of snow almost ensures death. http://www.bcaccess.com/pdf/ProbingR...B.Jamieson.pdf

But there have been live recoveries of buried vics who lasted more than 25 hours (I think that is still the “world record”).

So, the keys to surviving an avalanche are: 1. Wear a transceiver, since it is very difficult to find you when fully buried without one. 2. Check the transceiver and batteries before you go, at the trial head and occasionally while traveling. 3. Only go OB with people who are experts at transceiver search and avalanche forecasting – dry land train until you are perfect and use good avy mock ups for training. 4. Follow solid avy safety protocol all the time (14 people caught in a slide is NOT following any reasonable protocol, at most only one person should be in danger at a time, or maybe two if guides are being used). 5. Learn what to do once the snow starts moving (get your head inside your shell, you will need to breath!!!)

Here is a more sobering look at what you should be practicing concerning avy’s : http://www.adventureplus.org/avalanche.htm

After being buried in two avy’s, I found David’s article above is dead on.

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Originally posted by Dog

Here is a more sobering look at what you should be practicing concerning avy’s : http://www.adventureplus.org/avalanche.htm

After being buried in two avy’s, I found David’s article above is dead on.

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Interesting article. Though route finding was in my course.

Alot of tranciver checks on guided trips are done within a 5 metre range, with each person going by the guide to see if their personal tranciver works, then the next person goes by the guide. For an abundant of reasons this check has been proven to be useless.
The main reason being that the antena in the tranciver dislodges (happens often). The antena is a very small piece that can be easily dislodged. If you were to walk by a person to check to see if your tranciver works it would emit a loud (good) signal, because for such a close range the antenna is not needed. But once the tranciver is 2 Metres+ away, no signal.

Check your tranciver properly by doing distance checks.

The testing procedures for Beacons are surprisingly lax. I read a piece last year that said that the majority of beacons are only engineered to survivve a 1 meter drop onto sand. Pretty wimpy really when you consider the forces at work in an avalanche.

I'll hunt around and see if I can find it again. It was truly scary. Since I read it I have started wearing my beacon in such a fashion as to keep it a little more protected.

I know that when 7 people were killed in Silver Spray about 5 years ago, it took quite some time to find them because they were dragged through the timber and several of their beacons were smashed. One of them was not found until several weeks afterwards.

Take a look at these photos of the Russell avalanche and you can see the force involved. It's amazing any of them survived.

Photo 1

Photo 2

Photo 3 Pickup road visible in upper left corner.

Bottom line is, don't get caught in the first place. Easy to say I know but both of the recent deaths in the Norns Range involved full parties who were sitting ducks in the runout zone. How smart is that? It just goes to prove a long held belief of mine that professional guides won't necessarily save you. Guides are human too and are just as capable of making mistakes as anyone else. Is any ski run worth your life?

Familiarity breeds contempt. The guides had probably stopped in the same spot many times before and had no problems. It is easy to get lulled into a false sense of security because "It's never happened to me" or "We've done this lots of times with no problems".

This uptrack in this photo probably gets cut this way because the guy before did it that way and the guy before him did it, but why didn't they put it in the timber on the left. No rocket science here. Just plain common sense.

When I saw that I just shook my head. I know it is easy to sit back and critisize others but honestly, people need to spend a little more time considering the consequences of their decisions while skiing in the backcountry. Relying on beacons, dogs, etc is a surefire recipe for disaster and heartbreak.

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Originally posted by JR
The testing procedures for Beacons are surprisingly lax. I read a piece last year that said that the majority of beacons are only engineered to survivve a 1 meter drop onto sand. Pretty wimpy really when you consider the forces at work in an avalanche.

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JR, if your thinking back to the story written in the Jackson Hole News & Guide, I was actually quoted in there. Trust me on this, a 1 meter flat drop onto sand is enough shock to destroy nearly any consumer electronic (protable CD player, gameboy, even many GPS units). The physics of shock analysis is strange to people on the outside of the business. Looks like the engineers are not really doing their jobs, but in reality, they are making these things bomber. 1 meter drop onto sand, will do much more damage to a beacon than concrete, or even most avalanches. Generally, if a slide produces enough force to break a beacon, it will have already killed the skier due to trama.

Like you and many in this an other threads, it really comes back to not getting caught in the first place.

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Originally posted by JR
The testing procedures for Beacons are surprisingly lax. I read a piece last year that said that the majority of beacons are only engineered to survivve a 1 meter drop onto sand. Pretty wimpy really when you consider the forces at work in an avalanche.

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Consider what happens to your body under those same forces. Now consider how far away from real medical attention you are in the backcountry.

Finally - consider how much more $ it would cost for a bomb proof beacon, and how many people already consider them too expensive.

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Originally posted by LCC
Looks like the engineers are not really doing their jobs, but in reality, they are making these things bomber. 1 meter drop onto sand, will do much more damage to a beacon than concrete, or even most avalanches.

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Okay, I'll bite. How does a drop onto sand do more damage than a drop onto concrete? I'm no engineer but I need you to try and explain this to me.

As for engineers not doing their jobs, I have seen pieces of electonic equipment that were bomber because they were constructed that way. My feeling on this is that the engineers are given a set of criteria to meet and that is what they do. These criteria likely include price of finished product and size of finished product amongst many others.

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Originally posted by cj001f

Finally - consider how much more $ it would cost for a bomb proof beacon, and how many people already consider them too expensive.

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Consider how much a human life is worth.

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Originally posted by cj001f
Finally - consider how much more $ it would cost for a bomb proof beacon, and how many people already consider them too expensive.

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Beacons are expensive because they're made in low volumes. Electronically they are simpler than a cordless telephone and you can buy a decent phone for $20.

Making them bomber is more about design cost and time. The difference in manufactured cost would be close to zero.

1. DO A BEACON CHECK EVERY TIME YOU GO INTO THE BC!!!!!!!!! groups I got with osmetimes do two checks... one in the parking lot to see if everyone is working and another before descending to make sure everyone's is on and still working. You becaon is gonna do jack shit if you forgot to test and it was off or malfuncitoning (unless someone brought a recco transciever).

2. There are some standards for beacons... at least as far as transmit and recieve variances at various temperatures and battery lives...

3. This is not the first time I've heard of beacons failing to funciotn. We will have to wait and see what the lab shows as the reason why it failed and what hte coroner says the cuase of death was. The other instance I heard of (and I can't rmemeber location or beacon details) the beacon was destroyed in the avalanche but the skier died due to trauma as well. If you beacon gets busted by forces sufficient to kill you, it isn't quite as big of a deal except the recover team has to probeline, dog, recco, gpr, or metal detect your corpse instead of an easy beacon.

4. Of course visual clues trump beacon searches!!!! If there is an avalanch and you see your friends hand sticking out of the debris, are you going to go "duh... better take out my beacon and search" NO! You are gonna haul ass and dig around that hand! A lot of avalanches do not end it complete burials

5. Frequency drift.... I believe most manufacturers offer calibration... however... a beacon test should reveal any problems here.

there was some more... but I can't remember what I wanted to say...

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Originally posted by JR
The testing procedures for Beacons are surprisingly lax. I read a piece last year that said that the majority of beacons are only engineered to survivve a 1 meter drop onto sand. Pretty wimpy really when you consider the forces at work in an avalanche.

I'll hunt around and see if I can find it again. It was truly scary. Since I read it I have started wearing my beacon in such a fashion as to keep it a little more protected.

I know that when 7 people were killed in Silver Spray about 5 years ago, it took quite some time to find them because they were dragged through the timber and several of their beacons were smashed. One of them was not found until several weeks afterwards.

Take a look at these photos of the Russell avalanche and you can see the force involved. It's amazing any of them survived.

Photo 1

Photo 2

Photo 3 Pickup road visible in upper left corner.

Bottom line is, don't get caught in the first place. Easy to say I know but both of the recent deaths in the Norns Range involved full parties who were sitting ducks in the runout zone. How smart is that? It just goes to prove a long held belief of mine that professional guides won't necessarily save you. Guides are human too and are just as capable of making mistakes as anyone else. Is any ski run worth your life?

Familiarity breeds contempt. The guides had probably stopped in the same spot many times before and had no problems. It is easy to get lulled into a false sense of security because "It's never happened to me" or "We've done this lots of times with no problems".

This uptrack in this photo probably gets cut this way because the guy before did it that way and the guy before him did it, but why didn't they put it in the timber on the left. No rocket science here. Just plain common sense.

When I saw that I just shook my head. I know it is easy to sit back and critisize others but honestly, people need to spend a little more time considering the consequences of their decisions while skiing in the backcountry. Relying on beacons, dogs, etc is a surefire recipe for disaster and heartbreak.

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I never ever quote long whole posts like this, but there's good info here. Take it to heart.

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Originally posted by Snow Dog
Making them bomber is more about design cost and time. The difference in manufactured cost would be close to zero.

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I think we can agree manufacturing cost plays a lesser part in the pricing of ski goods than many other factors.

I was merely pointing out the obvious - A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE THINK BEACONS ARE EXPENSIVE! Yes, they're cheap for a life saving device - but they're also 1% of the average US household income.

Thanks Ice. I found a link to the story LCC mentioned and that I read last year. Worth a read.

JR I'll give this a shot, trying not to get to techno geeky with it.

A drop onto concrete produces shock that is very quick, only a few milliseconds. For most electronics to break, the shock is just not there long enough to produce damage. What you will see is maybe the plastic case cracking or something along that line. For most part, the internals will still work. Testing proved back in the 50's or 60's that even the human body can withstand extremely high G forces if only the exist for a very short time. Not exactly sure of the numbers, but I believe it was well over 100 G's!

A drop onto sand produces shock that is present for more time, say 30-60 milliseconds. It will have lower G-forces, but those G's are around for significantly longer. This is what damages electronics. The sand is also not your beach sand you sip fruity drinks on while watching bikini clad hotties play volleyball, its tamped down, and fairly firm.

Today, most companys with budgets, use specific machines to replicte these tests more accurately. I doubt that beacon mfgs have that kind of budget, so they do "old school" testing. Much more crude, but arrives at the same results. Hence the sand.

If your into math, think of the area under the curve on a graph, not the height of the curve.

Hope this helps to explain a little.

Relying on your beacon brings trouble. Rely on your education, experience, and gut feelings about snow. Staying out of the slide in the first place will keep you alive much longer than any beacon search.

Huh, that's interesting, LCC. I would never have thought that sand would be tougher on electronics than concrete.