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.

Pass The Soap

Lots of new visitors to the Anniviers Valley are a little overwhelmed by the narrow steep road from Sierre. Well, there is some good news and bad news. The good news is that this road is closed during the daytime until mid June. There are roadworks in progress.

The bad news is that all traffic must travel up via Vercorin to Mayoux, which is quite a lot narrower.
I had my doubts that the Postbus would even try to run a service using full size vehicles, would they borrow some minibuses? Make that a no!
Even delivery vans fill the road, and remember, this is 2 way.


I had been idly wondering what would happen if the Postbus I was on met something bigger, and on cue along came a really large lorry. It really does not matter how many air horns you have and which tunes they play, both these vehicles are too big for the road they are on.


In Switzerland the Postbus should have right of way, but as the the lorry had a tail of cars and vans behind it, reversing was impractical. Impasse!

The solution was found! The Postbus reversed a small way, crossed onto the opposite side of the road, allowing the lorry to pass alongside, now also on the "wrong" side.


We did this once again before we arrived in Sierre!

I know all my photos are sideways and I apologise, but it's something that Blogger does, I don't have my laptop tipped on it's edge, honestly.