I posit the following: There’s no appreciable difference between an out of bounds skier and most other rescues SAR does. Aside from the fact that out of bounds skiers represent a very small number of the total rescues BC SAR…
Tag: snow
Snowflakes that look like small, alien devices
Twisted Sifter presents a gallery of snowflakes taken under high magnification and some with an electron microscope. Looking at them, you can imagine them being machined in a factory rather than occurring naturally in the trillions each winter. Included are…
Snow GIFs
Since I can’t be skiing today, I find these animated GIFs of snow to be calming, both from Head Like an Orange.
Harvey’s cloud
The other day I was watching some of the great YouTube videos on the Environment Canada channel when I came across this one, on a “microscale weather phenomenon” near Whistler (this one was produced for the 2010 Olympics). I had…
Canadian Avalanche Air Bag study
Avalanche Balloon packs, or “Air Bags” (see WildSnow.com for an excellent overview of the current offerings) have been out for a few years, and other than anecdotal evidence, or data compiled by the manufacturers, there hasn’t been a lot of independent and peer reviewed study…
Discrepancy between Whistler and CAC avalanche reports
I’ve noticed a discrepancy between the Whistler/Blackcomb avalanche report and the one published by the Canadian Avalanche Centre. Since Whistler/Blackcomb doesn’t let me “permalink” to the bulletin, if you read this tomorrow you probably won’t see what I am seeing, so I’ll include…
Beacons vs Transceivers again
It seems that people are still have trouble telling the difference between a “SPOT Beacon” and an “Avalanche Transceiver” I wrote about this last year, based on some comments I heard while attending the CAA‘s Annual conference and AGM. The CAA posted…
Sledder Situational Awareness again
It seems someone else is paying attention to the sledder situational awareness problem, and has come up with a handy tool to help people develop skills and make better decisions. Posted on the SledLink page, the “STOP” tool advises sledders…
CAA AvSAR Course
As I mentioned via twitter, last month I attended the Avalanche Association’s “Avalanche Search and Rescue (AvSAR) seminar in Whistler, BC. I thought I’d write a bit about the course for any SAR personnel who might be considering sending someone to take it.…
Situational Awareness: Sledder vs Skier
In my last post on this subject I wrote about how skiers have an advantage over sledders in that they have more opportunity to observe conditions as they travel through terrain. Today, some observations on the flip side of the…
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