PSIA-AASI

2.17.2012

The Burgeoning Backcountry: Experience and Innovation

I remember it was more than a decade ago when a young snowboarder was killed by an avalanche while riding the backcountry at Berthoud Pass in Colorado. He wasn’t the first snowboarder to die in a slide on those windblown slopes, and tragically will almost certainly not be the last. But it was something his surviving friend told the newspaper that struck me. He said that a third friend, the one with the avalanche transceiver, “Couldn’t make it today.”

One transceiver for three? Even then, most people hunting wild snow seemed to know it didn’t work that way. But in the case of safety equipment, there is always the hope that the technology might be so fantastic to actually save us from ourselves—like an airbag that might somehow erase the mistake of crashing in the first place. Which seems to be the exact idea behind one of the biggest trends in the snow safety business.

At both the Outdoor Retailer tradeshow in Salt Lake City and the SIA Snow Show in Denver this January, manufacturers such as Ortovox, DaKine, and The North Face announced plans to join Backcountry Access, Inc. (BCA), and Mammut in providing airbags in some of their packs. The bags, which are inflated via a canister, are designed to keep users on top of sliding snow, instead of being buried underneath it.

Thus far, the results have been tremendous. According to the SnowSafe site (http://www.snowsafe.co.uk/abs-airbags-information.php), the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research has documented 106 cases where airbags were deployed during an avalanche, with 105 of those people surviving the event.

At the Snow Show, a 21-year-old snowboarder named Meesh Hytner said that just that week a BCA airbag had saved her life. But rather than giving full credit to his product, BCA’s Steve Christie told the Snow Show Daily, “Education and knowledge are still the most important things you can carry into the backcountry.” And on February 13th, when a snowboarder was killed by an avalanche in Telluride, Christie was proved right. That’s because even though the rider activated his airbag, it was “damaged beyond use in the avalanche,” according to the Colorado Information Center.

The fact remains that those who venture into terrain that could avalanche should be well-versed in route-finding skills, and an understanding of snowpack stability, slope angle, and safety zones. With more and more people pushing into the backcountry, looking for that untracked experience, snowsports schools from Squaw to Jackson to Sugarloaf are offering more lessons, clinics, and camps designed to introduce riders to the backcountry and sidecountry in a way that focuses more on their brain than their equipment.

It seems that even as the innovations continue, from rockered skis and snowboards to snow-riding flotation devices, the instructor’s role remains the same, to keep introducing people to the most powerful product on the mountain: themselves.

—  Peter Kray

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