When does the horse leave the barn?

January 13th, 2008 at 08:01pm Mitch Mulhall 171

I was sniffing around the internet for local news when I came upon this story about a new contraption that’s supposed to keep you safe in the event you find yourself being overtaken by an avalanche. In a week that has brought us two fatalities on separate occasions in the East Vail chutes, and a GSPI feature about some hair-raising backcountry travel by one group of intrepid locals, I learn of a device that takes charge of an avalanche critical moments before a beacon has a chance to be useful: the Avalance Airbag System.

How does it work? Well, it works on something called the Law of Inverse Particles. This principle says, in essence, in a settling process such as an avalanche, larger, heavier particles rise while smaller, lighter particles sink.

The Avalanche Airbag System looks like a set of industrial strength water wings. Two huge pillows of air blast out of a backpack and increase your personal, volumetric presence by about 150 litres, in theory making you one of the big particles in the avalanche settling process.

I find this product rather astonishing. It is based not solely on the Law of Inverse Particles, but also on human stupidity, not, mind you, in the case of backcountry enthusiasts, but specifically where skiers avail themselves of lift tickets and ski out of bounds. Why create a product that encourages people to place themselves in perilous situations?

The simple answer is, people will buy it, especially if they think it delivers a solution to a real problem. Maybe my half-century on this earth has too finely tuned my sense of mortality, but for alpine skiers and snowboarders, there is a veritable host of ways to avoid death by avalanche without so much as dreaming up an Avalanche Airbag System…

Entry Filed under: Skiing, Snowboarding, Sports, Glenwood Springs, Vail, Aspen, Colorado, Telluride, Crested Butte, Steamboat Springs, Pitkin County, Garfield County, Eagle County, Outdoors, The West, United Post