Beacon, probe, shovel, airbag? Are airbags saving lives? Should they be required backcountry gear? Are you crazy to venture into the backcountry without them? The Brazil-Nut Theory & Granular Convection (read this!)?
It’s starting to look like skiing without these airbag thingies in avy terrain is a mild form of insanity.
Outside Magazine explores the airbags in the context of Elyse Saugstad’s survival in the terrible Washington avalanche that took Jim Jack and two others.
Here are two excerpts from Outside Magazine’s Ryan Stuart’s article: “Blowing Up”
“The slide started small but grew to 200-yards wide and swept into the stand of old-growth trees where Saugstad was standing. As she felt the slide hit, Saugstad pulled a toggle on the left shoulder strap of her backpack, ABS Avalanche Airbag Systems’ pink Vario 18 model, and inflated twin 85-liter balloons. The avalanche carried Saugstad, Jack, Rudolph, and a third man, John Brenan, 2,000 feet downhill. When it stopped, Saugstad was mostly buried, with only her head and hands exposed, and unable to move. Of the four skiers caught in the heart of the slide, Saugstad was the only one wearing an avalanche air bag, and the only one to survive.” – Ryan Stuart/Outside Magazine
“THE AVALANCHE AIR BAG was developed by Josef Hohenester and Peter Aschauer in Germany in the early 1980s. After witnessing a deadly avalanche while skiing with friends, Aschauer, a German businessman, began testing air bag prototypes, eventually starting ABS and selling the world’s first commercial pack in 1985. Over the next 15 years, Aschauer’s design was bolstered by studies from the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, in Davos, that explained why air bags seemed to work so well.” – Ryan Stuart/Outside Magazine
Please read the entire article by Ryan Stuart of Outside Magazine here:
BLOWING UP