Speed is of the essence for avalanche victims, and these helicopter-mounted receivers cut down on recovery time.
Scott Willoughby
The Denver Post
Copyright 2007 The Denver Post
All Rights Reserved
SNOWBIRD, Utah — It takes only about 10 minutes for a lack of oxygen to cause brain damage to an avalanche victim. After 20, death by suffocation is the likely result.
For alpine rescue experts like Dean Cardinale, speed is a critical tool.
Cardinale, assistant director of snow safety at Snowbird Resort and president of Wasatch Backcountry Rescue (WBR), recently augmented his toolbox with the addition of the nation’s first helicopter-mounted long-range receivers designed to increase the odds of saving avalanche victims by significantly reducing rescue times.
The device, installed this winter in several medical and powder-skiing
helicopters along Utah’s Wasatch Front, hangs below a helicopter and is capable of picking up the signal transmitted by a typical avalanche beacon from nearly 200 yards - about three times the range of a standard receiver used to locate avalanche victims.
“The speed of the helicopter is just incredible,” Cardinale said. “The system dramatically cuts search time and reduces exposure for rescuers on the terrain at the same time.”
Designed by Manuel Genswein of Switzerland, the long- range receivers have saved lives in Europe, although they have yet to be used for anything beyond training in Utah. By quickly flying grids over an avalanche, helicopters equipped with the receiver can pinpoint the location of a victim within 15 to 20 feet, significantly narrowing the scope for ground searchers to quickly probe the area and dig out the victim.
Just as important is the reduced exposure for rescuers on established avalanche terrain.
“One of the great advantages is when we go in with other rescuers, they’re not exposed to a secondary slide with their beacons set on ‘receive,”’ Cardinale said. “That’s huge for the safety of our team.”
Partner rescues are still the most effective, Cardinale said, but the technological advancement of long-range receivers combined with the speed of cellphones, helicopters and often close proximity of burials to ski areas could reduce search times by professional rescue teams to those comparable to companion rescues.
“Avalanche rescue has traditionally been up to those in the touring party,” Cardinale said. “This technology will dramatically change rescue time, effort and success.”
Of course, the long-range receiver is useless unless the slide victim is wearing a beacon emitting a signal for the receiver to track. But no one, experts say, should enter the backcountry in winter without such a device.
“If you’re going out in avalanche terrain, you need to get educated and travel with friends that are well-skilled and well-equipped,” said Dale Atkins, Boulder-based co-author of the book “Avalanche Rescue” and an 18-year forecaster with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. “But the really big one is we need people to have beacons on.”