Backcountry Beacon

Whether you occasionally dart out of the resort gate for a couple of virgin turns or you spend entire seasons shunning the ski lift in favor of the backcountry skin track, you need a beacon strapped around your sternum. It can make the difference between sharing a pitcher with your pals at the end of the day and explaining to search and rescue why you couldn’t dig your pals out of a slide before they asphyxiated. Stark, but there it is.

Sadly, among all the gear one needs in avalanche terrain, the beacon is the most expensive. But before you put your left kidney up for auction to fund your next purchase, you need to make a sound decision about which beacon is right for you. If you have one, do you need to upgrade, or are you fine? And if you don’t have one but you hear the siren call of untracked steeps, how do you choose which blinking beeping light-up thingy to drop your dough on? Carbon dioxide kills buried victims within 15 minutes, and you need about 10 minutes to dig—so choosing a beacon you can understand and use efficiently is even more important than remembering hot sauce for your trailside breakfast burrito.

Beacon Features, Now Translated Into Words You Know

“The best beacon is the one you practice with most,” says Bruce Tremper, director of the Utah Avalanche Center. That being said, which one is best for you to master? The options are wide open. Beacons all have one thing in common–sending out 457 kHz electromagnetic flux lines and registering if you’re following them toward a buried victim. But beyond that, every beacon has its own unique features and advantages (and disadvantages). They range across a broad spectrum from the super-straightforward to tricked-out devices capable of everything but interplanetary navigation.

All beacons’ antennas send flux lines away from you in transmit mode and read others’ flux lines when you’re in search mode. Each antenna sends flux lines outward in the shape of an apple.

What sets a newfangled digital beacon apart from an older analog one is the number of antennas—an analog beacon has just a single antenna sending and receiving. But a digital beacon has multiple antennas inside, set at angles to each other to receive flux lines in multiple directions. The digital beacon notes where its flux lines intercept the lines from a victim’s beacon, and it uses this information to accurately calculate the location of the victim. So having more antennas to help you along makes digital beacons superior—and they’re pretty much all anyone is making anymore.

A beacon’s search range is how far away from a victim you can receive a usable signal. This determines how wide the turns of your search sweep can be—and a wider, faster search is valuable, so the bigger the search range, the better.

A beacon with a “multiple burial” search feature lets you search efficiently if more than one person is buried in a slide. You need to determine for yourself how important a multiple burial feature is for your purposes. Ski patrollers and search and rescue teams all use it—but it does make the beacon more complicated for recreational users to learn.

Consider carefully if you need a beacon with a multiple burial feature. What are the chances of people in your party being dimwitted enough to get caught in the same slide at once? (In which case, have the Safe Travel section of your Avy 1 course manual tattooed on your forearm for future ease of study… if you’re still alive.) However, if you do experience a multiple-burial slide, or you come across one triggered by another party, several victims’ lives can be at stake all at once. In such a high-pressure situation, it’s pretty rad to have a screen that quickly pulls up how many people are buried and where their relative locations are.

Many new beacons have updateable software too. Over the years, as a manufacturer makes improvements to a beacon’s functions and features, you can send your beacon in for a full software upgrade and skip making a new purchase. Also nice: the manufacturer will test your beacon to make sure everything’s ship-shape.

Bells and Whistles: To Bell or to Whistle?

Currently, Pieps, Backcountry Access (BCA), Mammut, and Ortovox are the big wigs in the avalanche transceiver market. BCA makes the original Tracker DTS and newer Tracker2; Mammut focuses on the Pulse Barryvox. Pieps makes the Freeride, the DSP, and DSP Advanced to suit different users’ needs. And Ortovox makes four—the F1, Patroller, D3, and the S1.

First, here’s the skinny on the simple, straightforward beacons: the BCA Tracker DTS and Ortovox Patroller are intentionally very simple—and in an emergency, easy is awesome. They each show you a simple blinking arrow and distance to a victim. Done. So if you’re the kind of person who’s still working with a therapist over your failure to personalize your desktop wallpaper, it’s probably best to go with something that doesn’t have an elaborate LCD screen with icons and options all over it.

Pieps also makes a simple, lightweight, inexpensive beacon, the Freeride. It’s specifically for people who want to carry a beacon just to be super-safe but who aren’t likely to be doing any actual searching themselves. (You can search with it if needs be, but its single antenna and small range make this a bit tough.) Is it better than no beacon? Absolutely. And if you’re skittish over news stories of inbounds avalanches at resorts, carrying a Freeride in your pocket will give you the peace of mind that comes from knowing patrol could search for you very easily.

“As a society, we all want to run out and buy the latest and greatest gadgets—but sometimes the fanciest beacon with the most features isn’t right for a particular user,” says Tremper. He makes a significant point, and simple beacons have a huge following.

However, some beacons are made for professionals and advanced recreationists who are damn well going to read the owner’s manual and will practice all the time. (Really, all the time. Resort patrollers are commonly required to do weekly drills and must be able to find a buried beacon in just a few minutes.)

The Pieps DSP and Pieps DSP Advanced (More bells! More whistles!) excel in multiple-burial situations and pack in a large load of features without making the user interface too complicated. Rep Carl Pelletier puts it like this: “The DSP is like a mullet—all business in front, with a party going on in the back.” Which makes sense when you pick it up and fiddle with it—a relatively clean home screen essentially shows, “Someone’s buried! Go this way!”

Meanwhile, in the background, you have three antennas searching for victims—just press a button to mark when you find one victim, and if another’s buried, the beacon automatically fixates on the next closest signal and leads you that way. A “scan” function surveys a slide area and gives users a list of how many victims are within closer and farther ranges, helping searchers prioritize and organize. A “frequency testing” feature lets you check others’ beacons to make sure they’re still transmitting at the proper wave length (transmission can slip over time—more on frequency drift later). And a Smart Transmitter feature eliminates the possibility that your beacon signal cadence could pulse at the exact same time as another beacon’s signal. It doesn’t happen often, but when one signal overlaps another, it throws beacons off and essentially scrambles your search procedure.

The three-antenna S1 is Ortovox’s latest flagship beacon. Its unique design takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do, everything seems intuitive and smart. It flips open like a clamshell cell phone, and it packs small and sleek when you’re not using it. Flip it open, and it’s automatically in people-finder mode. An extra-large screen shows an icon for each victim, arranged in the victims’ relative locations. Blessed with numerous supplementary features like an inclinometer, compass, and “group check” mode to check other beacons’ transmission, the Ortovox is great for visual-techy people. The layout is icon-only and word-free—look at the pretty pixels; listen to the reassuring beeps.

Also boasting three antennas, the Mammut Pulse Barryvox offers many of the same features as the Ortovox S1 and Pieps, plus the ability to sense if a victim is likely alive by registering the tiny motions of a victim’s heart and lungs. (This feature works if both victim and searcher are using the Pulse beacon.) This won’t make a huge difference in every situation—but theoretically, if there are multiple buried victims within a reachable distance, it could help to know who didn’t already die from trauma.

The screen also shows a unique 360-degree range of arrows to direct you toward victims, even if you’re facing the wrong way. Although the Mammut Pulse Barryvox makes sense once you learn it and it provides a heap of bells and whistles, testers often say its interface is more complex than the Ortovox S1 and Pieps. So it’s extra important to really familiarize yourself with how to take advantage of the beacon’s features—before an actual emergency. However, it should be noted that one of this beacon’s extra perks is that you can put it in “Basic” mode or “Advanced” mode to choose how complex or straightforward you want the interface to be.

Oh S@!t Moments: They Hurt Worse in the Backcountry

It’s scary to think about, but yes, things can go wrong with beacons. Are your batteries fresh enough for a prolonged search? Did you use alkaline batteries? (Lithium and rechargeables are no-nos.) Did you remove your batteries during the summer to avoid potential battery leakage?

Beacons are also susceptible to frequency drift—it’s what happens when the beacon ages, when you bash it around (no, your Labrador shouldn’t be allowed to gnaw on it), or you let it suntan on your dashboard all summer. These things compromise the little crystal oscillators inside that maintain the proper frequency, and the frequency can slip away from a 457 kHz wavelength. And if your beacon signal is way off, folks just might have to wait till the spring thaw to find you.

Next up: do you carry your cell phone or radio in your pocket? Of course you do. Do you have any fancy magnetic flaps sewn into your jacket? You might. But the problem is, each of these items—or any electronics, really—can interfere with your beacon and even shut it off without your knowledge. Consult your beacon manual for recommended distances to maintain between beacons, electronics, and magnets.

Now, what’s scarier than all these things that can go terribly wrong? You, the user, are. Because most beacon failures aren’t due to a beacon problem—they’re caused by the user’s mishandling or a lack of practice. Suppose you boarded an airplane, and the pilot came on and said, “Hey guys! I don’t do this much, but don’t worry—the buttons in here are pretty user-friendly.” You would claw through the seat cushions and emergency hatch to get off the plane before takeoff.

The point: practice is mandatory. Do it often. Re-read your user’s manual. Take avy awareness refreshers after your first course. Devour books and articles on snow safety. Follow all protocols to check your and your companions’ beacons before every outing. Find the local beacon practice parks at ski resorts and trailheads, and take advantage of them.

Any beacon is better than no beacon. But, as Tremper says, “If you don’t really know what you’re doing, it’s just an expensive rabbit’s foot.” If you never practice, wearing a beacon gives you a sense of security but only increases your chances of survival by about 10%. Experts and pros who practice frequently experience a 60-70% increase in survivability with a beacon. Much more bettah? Agreed.

Read customer reviews of avalanche beacons on their pages at Backcountry.com, and check the extensive in-depth reviews on WildSnow.com and BeaconReviews.com.

Related Posts:

• Avalanche Rescue: 4 Questions with a Guide
• Buried Alive – Conversation with an Avalanche Burial Survivor
• Helpful Avalanche Safety Acronyms: ALP TRUTh and FACETS

Tags: avalanche beacons, avalanche safety, backcountry skiing, backcountry snowboarding