News accounts about fatal
avalanches — and we’ve had nine deaths in the West this
winter — sometimes give the impression that the difference
between life and death is one easy piece of technology: an
avalanche beacon.
If only the buried victim had been
wearing a beacon, goes the story line, a life could have been
saved. That turns a beacon into something resembling a safety belt
for snowmobilers or skiers. I think the analogy is more like
wearing a safety belt while going over a cliff.
The
reality is far more complex. Beacons, also called transceivers, do
help, if everybody is wearing one. But they are no backcountry
magic amulet. In fact, there’s a gallows-humor saying about
the devices: They help searchers find a dead body more easily.
What you must first understand is how massively violent
all but the smallest of avalanches are.
“It’s like
getting sent through the spin cycle of a washing machine,” says
Scott Toepfer, an avalanche forecaster in Colorado. A moving
avalanche, he says, not only has a way of packing snow inside a
person’s clothes; it also strips clothes off. This heaving,
pummeling snow can fling its victims into trees and rocks. Studies
have shown that approximately 25 percent of avalanche fatalities
die not from suffocation or hypothermia, but by trauma.
Slab avalanches, in which the snow is like cardboard boxes or
sometimes even small cars, are the most frequent and deadly
avalanches. These blocks aren’t like plastic foam. Fluffy
snowflakes of weeks and months past have already been transformed
within the snowpack into something that more closely resembles a
box of marbles. Once the snow starts tumbling, the friction heats
these snow particles.
Then, only moments after the snow
has quit moving, the snow sets up into something that has often
been compared to hardened concrete. If that comparison seems a
stretch, consider this: Avalanche debris weighs about 800 pounds
per cubic yard.
“Go six feet down and you’re under
a Buick,” says Toepfer. In fact, statistics show that almost nobody
survives who ends up under more than six feet of snow, no matter
how many beacons they’re wearing.
But for even
those lucky enough to end up closer to the surface, avalanche
debris is a prison. The snow creates a body cast. Occasionally, if
they’re only inches below the surface, people have been able
to dig themselves out. But even people who have been buried up to
their waist have reported taking hours to extricate themselves.
Speed is of the essence in recovery. One Swiss study
showed that 93 percent of avalanche victims survived if
they’d been found within 15 minutes. The odds slide southward
at a horrendous rate every minute beyond. After 45 minutes
underneath the snow, the odds are down to less than 30 percent
survival. While different studies have yielded varying statistics,
they all curve rapidly in the same direction.
An
avalanche beacon can help speed this recovery. It all depends upon
whether somebody is around who has one and knows how to use it.
With luck, a search and rescue team will be near. But waiting for a
trained crew to arrive probably dooms you. As the saying goes, “You
got to dance with them what brung you.” Buddies who have been
skiing, snowboarding or snowmobiling with you are your only hope,
and they’d better dance fast.
It’s like
Ginger and Fred, or lock and key. Some things in life come paired.
Beacons only work with shovels. You can’t claw through
anything that resembles concrete with your hands. Probes help. But
ultimately, you need a shovel. That’s what I wish more of the
news reports said. Beacons are of little value without shovels.
Even then, your odds aren’t swell anytime you get in an
avalanche. A curious corollary is how many experts who know all
these statistics end up as avalanche victims. The draw of
backcountry snow is intense. But even experts don’t know
sure-fire technological fixes. Steep hillsides are flat-out
dangerous at times, especially soon after storms.
So the
next time you read about an avalanche victim, don’t be misled
if the story suggests that the victim might yet be alive if only he
(most avalanche victims are men) had been wearing a beacon. Crucial
to each case is whether others with beacons were close by, whether
they knew how to use them, and not least, whether companions had
invested in something very low-tech and unglamorous: a shovel.
Allen Best is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News, (hcn.org)
in Paonia, Colorado. He lives in the Denver
area.
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