geofflw wrote:You don't need jackstays as your footprints show even in avalanched snow,
Not really, it depends on the snow, it would exceptional to easily pick out tracks though. Really if it does track it can get confusing which is why large searches tend to use flags or poles to mark contact points and so on.
geofflw wrote:organising a pretty pattern of people on the slope is great in theory but it takes no time at all for someone to die once in the snow.
It's great in practice as well, that's why it's what you do and it's what you practice.
geofflw wrote:Many people think of an avalanche as a bit of a sluff that looks pretty spectacular. The reality is EXTREME VIOLENCE. Think of it as being attacked by a 120 mph bulldozer thats having a bad hair day and is half the size of your average town. If an avalanche can rip out trees [in milliseconds] whats it gonna do to your new jacket?
Avalanches vary in size and shape. A dry snow avalanche can move at up to 225mph but that's vanishingly rare outside the greater ranges. A wet snow slide would be more like 20mph. The normal alpine avalanche isn't really close to 120mph. On average with a dry slab avalanche you're looking at a speed of around 70 miles an hour.
geofflw wrote: Once the obvious sites have been checked then go into secondary search mode.
A primary search is the part of the process we're using a transceiver to detect any signal at all. Once that's detected we go to a secondary search pattern which should get us in 2 or 3 metres before finally going into a pinpoint search using probes etc.
Surface traces can be useful but in practice you need to consider that people get separated from kit, in fact in an ideal world if you're caught in a slide you want to release from bindings and drop your poles. Most people have some experience how far free gear can move in snow.
If you witness a slide then you need to try and closely watch for where you last clearly saw people, that's a help for deciding where to begin the search.
In fact, the very first thing you actually do after a slide is ensure you and the group are in a safe place. It's the most important thing bar none.
geofflw wrote: Breckenridge put out a taped off area where you could practice using transponders. Maybe it was 50 x 50 yds, with ten transmitters. Two of us took half an hour to find them all and it was hard work... going uphill at that altitude without a lift wasn't exactly making me look like an olympic athlete on a mission for gold, more like a clapped out old fart looking for the last oxygen molecule on the hill.
very true, and the lesson from that is that don't want to be searching from below of course. So if you're in a group crossing some suspect terrain you want to look at how you're moving and try and reduce that window for top searches. There's a few transceiver parks in the Alps and it's odd how rarely you see people start from above which is a realistic situation.