What do \ can you do?

[pechelman]

That other thread is making me think

Ive been in a similar scenario to this;

*Backcountry - no cell reception - no radios
*Terrain steep enough to slide, but hasnt for a long time, ie mature trees. Maybe 1500 vert and ~500ft wide area getting wider at the bottom
*Densely, for the most part, tree'd
*Later in the season, lower wind area, tall skinny trees, ie tree wells not a big concern
*Known terrain to either side of this band of trees that our group considered more dangerous and agreed to avoid.

Its also later in the day, maybe your last run or perhaps everyone is tired and just getting back to the TH or Car.

Now, you try to stay together as best you can, but sometimes in a groupd of 4 or 5, its easy to get separated, even with shouts.
Lets say the group is >4 but <= 6.

You get separated from one of your parnters half way down, whom you know to be a competent skier\bc traveler but whom you also know to be tired.

You call around for a few minutes, he was right behind you about 10-15 turns ago where you stopped to regroup and redirect the route down.

Skinning is possible, but due to the slope angle, depth of new soft snow, and density of trees, will be very difficult, and will take 15-20 minutes to backtrack up to where you last had visual and verbal contact, and then might be able to follow their tracks.

They are not responding to shouts or whistles.

What Do you do or What Can you do?


withholding what we did for now

[cmr]

aside from human factors (getting separated w/o eyes on or verbal), i'd force myself to go back. it would be a hard call, since i'd rather ski down and wait, but...

[Danno]

I have probably been in that exact scenario or something very similar more times than I could count. IME, it is ridiculously easy to lose people in the trees, you think they're behind you and in reality they're in front of you, you're waiting for them to come down and they're waiting for you from below, etc. And sound doesn't travel very far. In that scenario, as you describe, I believe that I would ski down to the obvious meeting spot and hope that they are already there or appear shortly.

[toast2266]

I'd traverse in the direction that I think they went and hope to see them / their tracks. Assuming I don't see their tracks, I would make the call based on the terrain. If there is a good possibility I just missed their tracks and they're waiting at the bottom for me, I'd ski down to the obvious meeting spot. If it really seems like I should have seen their tracks after traversing a bit I might head back up and look for them (but only after some hearty yelling). If I'm not too worried about slides, and tree wells are generally not an issue, I'd have to really feel like something was wrong in order for me to hike back up the hill.

[Dobish]

start things on fire and burn my skis for ullr....? or sit and eat a donut very loudly....

[Sirshredalot]

I'd probably send the rest of the group down to look and send the two studliest trail breakers remaining back up to the last seen point.

[bio-smear]

If they're drowning in a treewell above you, you can't save them anyway, because the climb will take 15-20 minutes. If that's the case, they're dead. It might make more sense if they're suffering a broken bone or some shin bang, but how do you know?

Ski down cautiously, stopping to call out at points that make sense to do so.

Radios, people. They cost nothing. The guesswork involved without radios can really ruin a day. Only a few people in my crew carry radios, and the ones that don't...gaah I could ring their necks (Ducky, ski_pdx). Of course maybe their objective is to avoid me, and in that case I'm ok with it.

So what did you do?

[pechelman]

we split up into 2 groups, one traversing left and one right
we went left and they went right
the group on the right found him skiing down slowly

not really a big deal

just curious what others would do, especially after that andrew star douchebag thread, and maybe to bring up the point that its not always so easy to keep visual\audible contact on your partners
not sure how to truly mitigate something like this...

im paranoid a bit about RF\EMI & my beacon, so even if i had a radio, it would be off mostly

[Danno]

im paranoid a bit about RF\EMI & my beacon, so even if i had a radio, it would be off mostly

But you would turn it on in a situation like this, right?

[Danno]

oh, wait, it was Dobish who was missing? In that case, ski to the bottom and crack a beer.

[Dobish]

nope, it wasn't me..... and i wouldn't even wait till the bottom to crack a beer

[pechelman]

im not even sure dobish was with us that day

and danno, id probably have the radio in my pack, turned off
so id miss a call until I took off my pack and turned on the radio

and assuming it was me who was lagging, id probably leave the radio in there and not bother with it unless i really needed help or was taking a very long time

who needs to crack a beer?
dont you guys ski with beer in the camelback?

[Dobish]

i was not there that day.... but i would send smoke signals. that is why i carry a gallon of gasoline with me in my pack.

[pechelman]

thats the solution!
burn down the trees!!

[bio-smear]

im paranoid a bit about RF\EMI & my beacon, so even if i had a radio, it would be off mostly

Has it been proven that this affects a searcher's beacon if the buried victim's radio is on? FRS/GMRS is 462.XX Mhz, and Avy Transceivers are 406 Mhz. I suppose that is close, but close enough to interfere with your beacon signal? It seems like the freq separation is easily wide enough, especially for a digital receiver.

I think the advantages of keeping a speed-disparate group together with radio comm outweighs what might happen in the event of a burial, because if you lose visual contact and a slide event occurs, it's that much more difficult to locate the victim, not to mention the hazards that aren't slide related (treewell, broken bone, debilitating joint injury.)

[Dobish]

yes. it has been proven, especially with the pieps dsp that pechelman uses.... it has been known to shut down the beacon....

[pechelman]

come on bio, i thought everyone read johnathan s' posts!

ive said it before
but im a little surprised i havent seen people making emi\rf pouches and stuff for cell phones
would be super easy and relatively cheap for them to make, and then could charge a ton for them.

actually, hmm, I wonder if one of those conductive esd pouches like for computer hardware would work. anyone happen to have one they can throw their cell phone in to see if it works\kills the reception?

[Danno]

and danno, id probably have the radio in my pack, turned off
so id miss a call until I took off my pack and turned on the radio

I get that. But if you've reached a point where there is a decision difficult enough to speculate about it after the fact on the net, I figure it was a decision difficult enough to warrant pulling the radio out.

Of course, then you'd just be changing the original scenario to add "you call them up on the radio, and get no response."

[ronco]

Has it been proven that this affects a searcher's beacon if the buried victim's radio is on? FRS/GMRS is 462.XX Mhz, and Avy Transceivers are 406 Mhz. I suppose that is close, but close enough to interfere with your beacon signal? It seems like the freq separation is easily wide enough, especially for a digital receiver.

Actually Avy Transceivers are at 457kHz (457,000 Hz) so they aren't close at all in transmit frequency to FRS/GMRS radios. (I think the satellite based Personal Locator Beacons are at 406MHz) But they, like any modern electronic device, do have other circuitry (such as microprocessors, and switching power supplies etc) that run at various frequencies that can radiate some electromagnetic energy that could, theoretically, interfere with your beacon.

You might want to try using your beacon in both search and transmit modes with the radio in question on and off, transmitting and not and see what happens. I would guess that it is much more likely that the FSR radio would effect a beacon's ability to search much more than it's ability to be found by your buddy's beacon when he's searching for you.

ronco
(and yes, I play a radio engineer in my day job)

[Dobish]

the pieps actually has a range of about 350kHz to 560kHz when picking things up, and sometimes will pick up things that are over 1000kHz off, which is strange, but i can find my house phone with my beacon when it rings....

all sorts of fun games can be played with this....