LVS-Gerät

The Snow and Safety Conference in Zürs am Arlberg is now part of the season opener on the Arlberg for the seventh year in a row. After last year's perfect conditions with a sufficient base and an additional load of fresh powder snow just-on-time, the participants and organizers were reminded once again this year that early winter does not always have the thickest snow cover.

Once again this year, we would like to present the PowderGuide community with a few suggestions for (more or less) suitable Christmas gifts for winter sports enthusiasts. Members of the extended editorial team present one of their Christmas wishes, irrespective of manufacturer, price and usefulness.

The Barryvox S follows on from Mammut's popular and widely used Barryvox Pulse. The device has been newly developed and is not only very easy and intuitive to use, but also offers an improved range and is also very compact. As befits a professional device, the Barryvox S is highly configurable and has numerous special functions.

In contrast to many large manufacturers of skis, ski boots and bindings, the avalanche transceiver and airbag manufacturers were all represented at ISPO. When it comes to avalanche transceivers, there are small to medium improvements rather than huge innovations, and with the exception of Scott/Alpride, hardly anything significant has changed in terms of airbags.

This year, together with risk'n'fun, we have once again awarded a training place for the r'n'f Camps Training Session, Next Level and for the Chillout. Lisa, this year's winner, reports on the training session in Sölden. By the way, the next free places are at the camp on the Hochkönig in February!

If you haven't done it yet, you should definitely do it: get the shovel from the construction site, the probe from the flower bed (if it was used as a climbing aid, as it was for me in summer) and the avalanche transceiver from the basket for a mushroom search. It's winter!

I've just been on a summer getaway in Croatia and was shocked to discover that it's already snowing there too. So, there's no denying it: it's winter and the season of skiing, powder, PowderAlert and snow depth prediction games has begun!

Ullr on a surfing trip at the beach = winter over = prediction game over = final results and overall winner! firsttrack won with an average deviation of less than 5%, followed by chevchelios with a deviation of 7% and skimale1982 with 8%. Congratulations!

Every year at the end of the season, PowderGuide invites all authors, ConditionsReporters, testers, snowstormers, PowderAlerters - in other words, the large PG community - for a weekend in the mountains as a thank you. It's not just about socializing, but also about sharing and discussing, as well as reviewing the season with all topics related to freeriding and ski touring - and of course being out in the snow. On Saturday, it is a tradition to offer one or more workshops - this winter, PowderGuide was able to win over snow rummager Lukas Ruetz, Lorenzo Rieg and Fabiano Monti and Walter Steinkogler from ALPsolut. This time they were invited to the very cozy Stuibenhütte, beautifully situated below the Alpspitze.

BCA and Alpride now have similarly lightweight and small airbag systems as the other manufacturers. Some companies that previously bought in airbag systems for their own backpacks are taking them out of the range completely after winters with low sales. Mammut has completely redesigned Barryvox avalanche transceivers - one in the mid-price segment and one high-end device.

Avalanche rescue has made great progress in recent decades because new rescue and communication technologies are being used more and more frequently by off-piste skiers, ski tourers and rescuers.

I have a cell phone with me when I'm skiing, if only for safety reasons. Of course, taking pictures and listening to music on your smartphone isn't bad either. Sometimes I take a helmet camera with me, or maybe a real camera, or both, or an MP3 player, or a GPS, or a radio, or something else from the electronic fleet that many of us have at home. Unfortunately, none of this really works well with the avalanche transceiver. Why is that and what should I look out for?