Beep

This winter I'd promised myself that I'd get some snow time practice in with my Transceiver. I've practised in two dimensions, but I really wanted to have a try in the local Avalanche Training Centre in Zinal.

I have an Analogue Transceiver, an Ortovox F1 Focus, and I had the perfect opportunity to spend a sunny afternoon at the free facility in Zinal. The snow was warm and soft, and not too good for skiing, but perfect to practice in the warm sunshine.

The facility is really easy to use, with instructions available in several languages, and once I'd set the timer and number of "victims" to search for I began to discover just how tiring it is to clamber around wearing ski boots in hilly conditions using a probe and Transceiver.

The facility has buried several responders around the site, and searchers have to find them and touch them with their probe to switch them off. I had good success at getting close in using my Transceiver, but failed to get a pinpoint location every time I tried. I don't know if my machine is faulty, my skills are deficient, the facility has a fault, or it really only works with 2 Transceivers. My machine kept losing it's direction signal when I switched to close range, new batteries too!

The experience made me understand just how exhausting it is to going to be to search for a buried person under Avalanche debris.

I'm sad to report that my 2 "buried victims" would have died as I failed to find them in the search time I'd set.