Lawinensicherheit

With the new Evo 5, the safety specialists from Arva in France are launching a new avalanche transceiver on the market for the current season that packs all the essential features into an extremely small and lightweight housing.

You could say that the weather gods didn't mean well with the new, old Snow&Safety Conference in Lech am Arlberg this year. Rain in Lech was not necessarily what freeriders and off-piste skiers had hoped for. On the other hand, it wasn't really about powder skiing but about risk management in the winter mountains. The conditions were indeed challenging for this and therefore anything but unsuitable.

In the avalanche bulletin, the typical avalanche problems are also indicated in the hazard description. While the avalanche danger answers the question "How high is the danger?", the avalanche problem gives an indication of "What is the problem?".

Every two years, the International Snow Science Workshop (ISSW) brings together scientists and practitioners from a wide range of different, but always snow-related, subject areas. New findings and research results are presented in various thematic blocks - so-called sessions. We break the whole thing down into more or less digestible morsels and summarize the sessions of ISSW2018 for you every two weeks. This time: Hazard communication and perception.

The Snow&Safety Conference on the Arlberg is entering its 8th season this year and is a good opportunity to practice with the avalanche transceiver, exchange ideas with like-minded people or simply listen to an instructive lecture. It will take place next weekend, 13.12.2019 - 14.12.2019 (Friday and Saturday) in Lech am Arlberg.

All customers who are in possession of a Generation 3.0 avalanche airbag (neon-colored release handle) from the Winter 16/17, Winter 17/18 or Winter 18/19 seasons are requested to check the fixation of the balloon using the following instructions or to contact Mammut Customer Service. Avalanche airbags from earlier seasons (red release handle) are not affected.

Since last season, Black Diamond has had two re-labelled Pieps avalanche transceivers in its range: the Guide BT and the Reckon BT. The BD Guide BT corresponds to the Pieps Pro BT, the BD Reckon BT to the Pieps Powder BT. Guide/Pro and Reckon/Powder are the successors to the Pieps DSP Pro and Pieps DSP Sport respectively, i.e. the "top model" in the line-up (Guide/Pro) and the slightly slimmed-down, cheaper version (Reckon/Powder/Sport). The BD devices differ from the Pieps models only in colour.

White Risk, the SLF's comprehensive learning/knowledge tool for avalanche prevention, has been around for several years now. While version 1.0 was still distributed via DVDs, White Risk has been web-based and interactive since 2013. The White Risk app for IOS and Android is also available so that you can use the planned tours on your smartphone. I tried out how well the whole thing actually works for you using a tour to the Seekarspitze as an example

It's going to be a turbulent week - the PowderAlert has already announced it. One front chases the next, all bringing precipitation, initially with relatively cool temperatures.

In the past, avalanche transceivers had a relatively simple design. You could switch them on and off and switch from transmit to search mode. At some point, the marking function was added and numerous other functions have since been introduced. No wonder, when you think about the fact that a standard smartphone now probably has more computing power than a mainframe computer in the 1990s.

The Arva NEO+ is a further development of the NEO series with even better performance. Thanks to a new hardware basis and optimisation of the software, the search strip width has been increased to 70 m.

By chance, I stumbled across the STRG_F documentary "Snowboard and Ski: How dangerous is deep snow?" on youtube. STRG_F is an online research format that is based at NDR and always takes up interesting topics. But what I saw in the documentary by Henning Rütten left me in disbelief.