J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ir12daveor

The snow depth is actually quite relative. In glacier resorts they do not report the depth of new snow on the glacier but the depth of the glacier. Thats why in some resorts in Switzerland you'll see reports of 3m of snow on the mountain and 20cm in the town in the early season.

I read about this with dismay yesterday. Another good ski resort about to go to sh!t. :(

http://www.pieps.com/en/lvs/pieps-dsp.html

Sorry, it appears mine is 50m not 60m. Either way nearly all transceivers that are worth their salt these days have three antennas and have a similar range.

AllyG wrote:Thanks very much IR12daveor for all that information :D

I would guess that most people stay in St Moritz itself because that's where most of the package holidays go. It's much harder trying to sort out a DIY package, with transfers etc.

And that package holiday with Club Med to St Moritz does sound very good value.

I rather fancy Verbier myself, mainly because they speak French there, and I don't know any German. Presumably they speak German in St Moritz, and all the signs etc. are in German? Or can all Swiss people speak French as well?

Ally

The vast majority of people in German speaking Switzerland speak English. In fact in Engadin many of the resort staff speak Italian as a first language. You'll get by quite happily with English though.

There are different search techniques depending on how many people are spare to do the search, the size of the debris and the devices being used.

Modern transceivers have a search radius of up to 60m so if the Debris is 80m wide then theoretically one person could walk straight down the middle of the debris and still have a 20m overlap on his search range on each side. If the Debris is 120m wide then two people walking straight down the debris 40m from the edges, and 40m apart would have the same effect.

Unfortunately in the mountains we probably never have an ideal situation if something goes wrong. The debris can be two wide and you might only have one person searching. Then they would need to do a zig zag search down the debris where each zig or zag would be close enough to each other to have an overlap and ensure no part of the debris is left unsearched. As things get more complicated with multiple burials, larger search areas etc then you need to adapt the the techniques to make the search as quick as possible without leaving any dead spots in the search pattern.

Many beacons have information on searching techniques on the back or in the instruction manual, but you can not beat doing an avalanche course

Just a bit of advice to those going to St. Moritz.

St. Moritz itself is quite small. It is the more glitzy area where the rich and famous go to be seen. For Joe average the place is actually pretty tacky and I wouldn't say its worth paying a premium to be able to say that you stayed in St. Moritz.

The surrounding towns, Pontrasina, Silvaplana, Celerina (accesses the exact same area as St. Moritz and is at the bottom of the Cresta run)seem to offer much better value for money, allow you to ski in the same areas and offer a much more authentic Swiss experience.

When I go up there I don't think of my self as going to any one of those towns, instead I think of it as going to the Upper Engadin valley. In the valley everything is close together with great bus and train services making it easy to get anywhere you want. Even if you stayed in Pontrasina it would only take about 20mins to get to Corvatsch which is the other end of the valley.

I day tripped it up there yesterday from Zurich had a full day in the mountains and was home again last night so I don't really think the logistics of getting from one end of a small valley to the other will be a problem. Especially with the efficiency of how all things Swiss run.

If you really want ease of access to the main area (Corviglia) then my advice is to stay in Celerina. There are some hotels (Hotel Post, Hotel Misani) which are less then 5 mins walk from the lift and very close to the train station). The lift from here accesses exactly the same area as that from the town in St. Moritz and its probably even quicker to get to the lifts then if you stayed in St. Moritz itself and tried to get to the Funicular which goes from the top of the town.

The town is over rated, but the Engadin valley in general is an amazing area. The smaller towns around St. Moritz (Silvaplana, Pontrasina, Celerina etc.) all have a much more unique Swiss feel to them and allow you access to the same skiing areas.

The skiiing is great, you have loads of terrain on various mountains. The two main areas are Corviglia and Corvatsch. Corviglia is the area over St. Moritz itself and has some nice wide open pistes and some good off piste too. Corvatsch is a bus ride up the valley a little bit and in my opinion is a little steeper, but also offers great terrain with stunning views of the frozen lakes in the valley and the surrounding peaks and glaciers.

If you get bored of the two main areas you can always check out Lagalp and Diavolezza or take a day on the Bernina Express train to visit Poschiavo.

I'm heading up there again this weekend. I love the mountains up there summer and winter.

In Switzerland there are a number of incidents each year where Avalanches cross the ski piste. Bandit do you know which one is mentioned earlier in this thread? I looked at the link but it seems the name of the resort has been removed which I find quite irresponsible.

Generally speaking if you are literally riding on the other side of the poles there is very little risk, but this isn't always that case. There were incidents in Zermatt and Davos that come to my head immediately where skirts set off avalanches very close to the edge of the piste.

For someone like Ally I would say if you want to ride beside the piste stick to flatter slopes and an Avalanche risk of less then 2. Once the avalanche risk goes up to 3 then you really need to have a little bit of a background in measuring the slope steepness and understanding the avalanche bulletin even if doing steeper unprepared runs in a ski area. As soon as you think about going any little bit past the poles and want to do some of the steeper offpiste terrain (30deg+) then it is time to get a transceiver shovel and probe AND LEARN HOW TO USE THEM!

As for the ranges of transceivers. The vast majority of 3 antenna digital models these days have a range of about 60m with no reduction due to orientation from the buried transceiver. The older Analogue models may have a higher range in perfect circumstances, but they would have a smaller range if not lined up correctly with the buried transceiver AFAIK.