Imagine you are in a group of five people touring the Wasatch backcountry. Then, the unthinkable happens and an avalanche sweeps everybody away, burying them under heavy snow. You are the only one standing and it’s up to you to find and save your friends who will likely suffocate in 15 minutes.
This is a nightmare scenario that can happen to anyone who skis the backcountry. The key to being prepared to deal with such a situation is to get educated and practice, practice, practice. A rescuer has to be an expert at using an avalanche transceiver and he has to be fast. One way to get fast is to practice at a beacon training park.
There are several beacon training parks in the Wasatch and they are all free. Buried transmitters located throughout the park simulate avalanche victims. Users then choose the difficulty setting on a control panel. Easy is a single victim search, moderate includes two burials, and expert consists of a multiple burial search with an unknown number of victims between one and four. After a difficulty setting is chosen, a timer starts counting down. Once a victim is located, searchers use a pole to probe the snow where a buried sensor will set off an alarm and stop the clock. The control panel then displays computer-generated feedback about the search.
I recently went to the beacon training park at Solitude with a friend. I started out with the easy search and found the victim in just over three minutes. Upping the ante, I increased the difficulty to moderate and found both victims in 4 minutes, twenty seconds. Then together we completed the expert level search with four victims in a little over five minutes.
After practicing at the beacon park, I realized that although I found the victims fairly quickly, I experienced some confusion when there were multiple burials. In the past I only searched for a single victim using a buddy’s beacon buried in the snow. But when there are multiple burials, the added number of signals being transmitted made the display and audio cues on my transceiver a lot harder to decipher. Training at the beacon park forced me to learn how to interpret several signals at once.
There are currently four beacon parks in the Wasatch Front. One is located at Snowbird near the helicopter landing pad, one is at Solitude just west of the Moonbeam parking lot, one is found at The Canyons near the Red Pine Lodge, and a newer beacon park was recently installed at Snowbasin. Hopefully people utilize this resource, because knowing how to properly use rescue equipment during an emergency situation is the key to saving lives.
“Upping the ante, I increased the difficulty to moderate and found both victims in 4 minutes, twenty seconds…”
4:20