Avalanche Awareness - It's no joke......

What ise is saying is that it is the industry wide view that there is no effect on tracker signals.. which is no doubt true.

This remains a valid point but if it provides piece of mind to turn off your mobile phone by all means do it... skiing bc is all about being comfortable with yourself and doing what makes you as happy and as safe as possible.

Just because something works for you, or is within your comfort level, does not mean it is a suitable method or step for someone else.

Nagrjuna wrote:

So?

You're still telling people to ignore the advice of other professionals in the industry on the basis of your own views (or your particular training) on the subject!

If you, from your experience, don't want to act on that advice then don't, but don't go round telling others to do the same.

Don't be silly, what I'm saying is no different from other professionals, in fact you quoted one. I actually don't care a lot if you turn your phone on or off, what I do care about is when you're advising everyone else to follow your practise based on information that's false.

I will continue to inform people, that's kind of the point of being qualified to do so :roll:

There is absolutely no need to worry about people being advised to take a course of action that has no possible negative impact, even if you don't beleive there is any positive impact to be had from said course of action. If you switch your phone off needlessly there will be no repercussions whatsoever (in fact you're more likely to have enough battery left to make that emergency call, especially as battery life suffers at cold temperatures) - if you fail to switch off there is some potential for a freak occurance such as when Motorola GP340s was proven to switch the Pieps off or from send mode to search mode.

There is no possible harm, practical or theoretical in telling people to switch off as most manufacturers and many professionals advise - the only possible harm is in telling people to ignore what I consider to be pretty sound advice.

Anyway thats my two cents, from a background as a former Celluar Optimisation Engineer (and a non-pro backcountry skier). But as Ross says everyone has to make their own decisions, hopefully most people will err on the side of safety as really its no skin off anyone's nose to push a button and switch a mobile off however slight the risk may be.

Besides - who on Earth wants a phone call to interrupt a Powder Day, I ski to get away from the hustle and bustle - last thing I'd want is people hangin on the phone hassling me about work!

I've just read this thread with interest and felt compelled to register to give my two pence.

I have used many of the modern avalanche transceivers for search practice, my own transceiver is the Pieps DSP which is "supposed" to be one of the ones that is effected by mobile phones the most! In various test settings I have never gotten a ghost signal because of the phone! I have purposely tried to get the phone to interfere with the device and have been unable to do it!

I can think of one very good reason to leave your phone on when in the back country. If someone is buried the first thing you want to do is call help. The quicker you can get a helicopter in there the better. If your phone is already on then if it has signal there is no pfaffing around trying to turn it on, put in your pin code and wait for a signal. If its on you see immediately if you have coverage or not, if not you know someone has to go somewhere to get coverage while the other group members search. Its simply time saving in an emergency if the phone is switched on.

Recently (3 weeks ago) I was involved in a fairly large search after an avalanche came down near where I was riding. Myself and 3 other members of my group searched with two mountain guides. One of the mountain guides was on the phone with the emergency services during the whole time we were searching, which was in excess of one hour!

ir12daveor welcome to J2ski :D

Great 1st post :thumbup:

I hope that there was a positive outcome to the search you were involved in, which must have been pretty scary stuff.

bandit wrote:ir12daveor welcome to J2ski :D

Great 1st post :thumbup:

I hope that there was a positive outcome to the search you were involved in, which must have been pretty scary stuff.

Thanks,

The search outcome was positive in that there was no-one buried. We searched for an hour until the dogs arrived. We had a helicopter overhead for a good chunk of it. The problem was that none of us knew if someone had been buried or not. There were about 50 people riding that slope that day and the slide was huge. It went about 800m down the mountain and extended about 200m out into the flat. The debris was 4m deep where it ran out through a gulley that we were searching in. It was a miracle that noone got caught in the slide.

One point that might be relevant to this discussion though is that a few of us did get ghost signals that day. The common consensus when we discussed this amongst ourselves and the guides afterwards was that the ghost signals were probably due to a cable car operating over head. The ghost signals were easily identifiable as ghost signals because they flashed a reading for a split second which could not be found again. It was quite freaky though because for a short time you suddenly go into overdrive thinking you've found someone.

ir12daveor wrote:The common consensus when we discussed this amongst ourselves and the guides afterwards was that the ghost signals were probably due to a cable car operating over head. The ghost signals were easily identifiable as ghost signals because they flashed a reading for a split second which could not be found again. It was quite freaky though because for a short time you suddenly go into overdrive thinking you've found someone.

That's the point really, if you're familiar with your device then the ghost signals, which are rare anyway, are easily identifiable. And it's no bad thing being able to identify them in case you are in problematic situation like under power lines.