Avalanche Training Centre Zinal

Today I skied Zinal, which is looking a little worse for wear. This afternoon I visited the Avalanche Training Centre. It was the 1st time I'd used the facility, and I found the setting of the equipment up very easy.

Finding the two "victims" I'd set to search for is not at all easy. You need to scramble around on a hilly slope in ski boots, following the signal from the transceiver, the difference here, is that as a searcher I'm not full of adrenaline, and it's a nice sunny clear day.

I failed. Both of mine would have died :oops: :shock:

Hi Bandit,
I guess you just need a bit more practice :D

There was one of those centres in Courchevel as well. We were going to have a go at it on Saturday morning, but we decided to go ski-ing instead 8)

Was the one in Zinal free?

Ally

Yes, the Zinal facility is free to use and sponsored by Mammut (I think) You do need to bring a transceiver though.

Bandit,
I think the one in Courchevel was free, but I never got to find out, and they provided all the equipment. I think the idea is that if they train enough people there will hopefully be some trained holidaymakers on the spot to help if there is an avalanche.

I would guess that the more trained people you have searching, the better the chances are of finding someone alive.

Ally

With respect to the training centres, they are all free. (At least in Switzerland). The idea is to provide an easily accessible training facility for anyone leaving the controlled pistes. Many of the Swiss resorts now have something like this near their freeride areas. Davos has one in Pischa, Andermatt on Gemstock and I believe many other areas have them too.

To be honest in a real situation I'm not sure how much adrenaline can really help. I had the lucky/unlucky situation of having to search through the debris from the avalanche pictured below last winter. We didn't know if someone had been buried or not, and we came within 15 minutes of being victims of it ourselves! The adrenaline was certainly pounding especially when I got ghost signals on my transceiver twice! Despite the adrenaline I was still totally at my limit trying to climb around the debris field and keep some sort of a reasonable search pattern. I am quite fit and spend every weekend in the mountains either biking or skiing winter and summer, but without experiencing this I would not have realised exactly how much effort it takes.

Luckily there was no one buried but we still spent an hour searching, a good chunk of that with a Rega helicopter flying over us.


To get an idea of scale the slide was 300m wide and slid for 1.3km (close to a mile!) The debris extended about 200-300m out into the flat at the bottom of the mountain and was 5-6m deep in places.

That sounds really frightening :shock: What a huge avalanche! At least no-one was caught in it, and well done for helping to look for people.

Ally

For my simulated search, I believe I had an advantage because I was not full of adrenaline. For me, I know it makes me rush, shake and make errors. I'm not sure if my transceiver is at fault,or it's me. I had some practice in the UK and searches went fine, but my set simply failed to get me there on the close range search. It kept losing the signal on switching down to close range.

New avi air bag....

Mature viewers only

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gzaytm4WYA