@ieism wrote:

AVI 2 no doubt. Here’s why:

– An airbag doesn’t save as many lifes as the commercial wants you to believe. They say 97% makes it out with an airbag that they actually pulled. Thing is, it’s not easy to pull the thing while your tumbling down is it, so they leave that out of the statistics because it’s bad for business.
– 97% survival rate sounds good, but about 80% of people survive regardless of wearing an airbag. Remember, most slides are quite small here in Europe (where the 97% statistic was from) So it’s not a near 100% improvement, you almost double the odds of getting out alive if you are buried though.
– You will still get buried with an airbag in a larger slide, and won’t be able to free yourself. An airbag doesn’t prevent this, they’ve tested it. So if you don’t have anybody to dig you out you could still die.
– 5 to 10% of victims die from trauma, mostly to the head, while in an avalanche. An airbag won’t change that, a helmet might. If you ride very exposed lines this number goes up dramatically and the odds of dying from trauma are nearly 50%. So an airbag only makes sense in low consequence terrain.

If you follow an avy2 course, you can prevent all of the above problems by not being in the wrong place at the wrong time. No slide, no deaths. The method they teach here in Europe filters out 99% of the risk, so the statistics are much much better than an avi pack considering the above facts.

(For the record, I’ve been using an airbag for years myself and so have most of my friends. I would not like to tour with someone who has an airbag but a very basic understanding of avalanches and resque though. I don’t know how good an Avi1 or 2 class is, I only know one person who did one in the US. The course is a little different in Europe from what I understood.)

Solo? Yeah, I woudn’t really recommend that without an avy2 class either. It might make you feel better to wear the bag, but it probably won’t save your live. It mostly depends on where and what your ride though.

Here’s where an airbag will almost certainly help.

If you’ve done an avy2 class, you can probably spot in about a second what went wrong here. Can you?

Here’s where it will make no diference at all.
http://hqworld.net/gallery/data/media/84/avalanche__rock_mountain_face__alaska.jpg

An airbag wont work if you hit a tree, get dumped down a rockface, buried in a terrain trap, caught by a wet slab or secondary avalanche. Besides that, even if you’re lucky you still may get burried a little. They tested that at SLF lot. Without the bag about 60cm, with bag 20cm. That’s cool, because your friends can dig you out real fast, and that saves lives. But it sucks if you’re solo. You almost survived.

I’m not sure what they teach in avy2 in the US or Canada. But you almost certainly will make better decisions to prevent all of this from happening.

An airbag is just like a lifebuoy. If you can’t swim, you probably shouldn’t cross the atlantic by yourself.

Apologies for thread drift, but your post hit a nerve. :banghead:

Am I the only one on this forum that is just sick of hearing of people dying senselessly and the sidestepping of the issue that always follows – Lets face it, they made poor choices and accepted the risk.

So, if you didn’t acquire the knowledge to make safe decisions in a level 1 course, level 2 is pointless. At least the airbag gives you a window of hope when you accept a certain level of risk, or make a poor decision.

:twocents:

@ieism wrote:

Solo? Yeah, I woudn’t really recommend that without an avy2 class either. It might make you feel better to wear the bag, but it probably won’t save your live. It mostly depends on where and what your ride though.

Here’s where an airbag will almost certainly help.

If you’ve done an avy2 class, you can probably spot in about a second what went wrong here. Can you?

Here’s where it will make no diference at all.
http://hqworld.net/gallery/data/media/84/avalanche__rock_mountain_face__alaska.jpg

An airbag wont work if you hit a tree, get dumped down a rockface, buried in a terrain trap, caught by a wet slab or secondary avalanche. Besides that, even if you’re lucky you still may get burried a little. They tested that at SLF lot. Without the bag about 60cm, with bag 20cm. That’s cool, because your friends can dig you out real fast, and that saves lives. But it sucks if you’re solo. You almost survived.

I’m not sure what they teach in avy2 in the US or Canada. But you almost certainly will make better decisions to prevent all of this from happening.

An airbag is just like a lifebuoy. If you can’t swim, you probably shouldn’t cross the atlantic by yourself.

A lot of generalizations being made here. Everybody loves to attack airbags, but fact is they do increase your odds of survival. Even if its only a 10 percent increase, its worth it to me. The key is not to allow it to increase your level of acceptable risk. This is very hard to do.

Hard to tell too much from that picture based on the size of the track though I don’t think an airbag would do anything. Without knowing the details behind the photo, it looks like maybe a 6 inch slab. If the snowpack was bomber prior to the recent snow that slope could be perfectly fine to ski, just watch your sluff and pick clean lines.

A level 2 class can also give you more confidence and get you in trouble. Assuming you are eventually going to get both, I would get the airbag first, then keep reading and observing and make good route finding decisions. If you feel you have plenty of experience with this, then take a level 2.

Some food for thought. I just got done reading this months The Avalanche Review, and they had an article about airbags. It tried to find the least biased results possible. In summary, what they found was:

Without an airbag pack, you have a 22% mortality rate in a d2 or larger avalanche. With an airbag, you have a 13% rate (11% with successful deploy), taking into account non-releases. But if you start thinking that with an airbag you can take larger risks, you nullify these results.

Interesting to think about and I agree. I would say that I don’t take more risks with an airbag than without, but in the back of my head, I know I have it on to help in some situations with cleaner run outs in some snow conditions. I know with a deep slab, I’m probably fucked either way, and with terrain traps and trees, same idea. But I’d like to think in clean run outs and smaller paths, it gives me a better shot, if I don’t break legs and bleed out. Either way, I don’t want to get caught in one, and a level 2 knowledge to stay away could be better.

I am personally taking an avalanche 2 course this year, and excited about it. I got the airbag first, and won’t be able to say what’s better until I get through the class.

Re OP: Tremper says Airbag > Beacon + Probe + Shovel + Buddies who know how to use theirs. (But he’s not comparing that to Avy2) I think he takes the Avy-ed as a given in the equation.

The class is only as good as you are willing to read, do the homework, and apply what you’ve learned. The bag is only as good as your ability deploy it and not ride above rocks, cliffs, or trees.
***********************
I have some biases:
* Here in SoCal, there is no bulletin so Avy safety and snow sense is 100% up to me.
* I am 200 miles away from any alpine terrain (60 mi away from steep, deep, treed terrain; but not alpine)
* My Avy2 was put on by the NSP and geared toward patrollers and rescuers
* All the snow dried up halfway through my Avy2 course, so I haven’t actually finished it. (Frackin’ drought!)

There is not much wholly new in Avy2 that wasn’t in Avy1; there’s more reading, more math, and more applied learning.
Whereas Avy1 is geared to ‘scare you straight’, equip you to read & understand bulletins, and participate in safety meetings (i.e. make safety calls the day-of for a particular slope); Avy 2 is geared to humble you into dutiful study and equip you to lead* trips into the backcounty (i.e. understand how snow metamorphoses, begin to forecast hazard for a day or two, and practice safe route finding).

Also Avy2 enables you to start a career as an Avy-pro (more like an Avy-part-timer): patroller, forecaster, rescuer.

* I fully recognize the group model of leader & followers is not ideal. However if you’ve had Avy2, chances are, you are the most Avy-educated individual in any group you’ll be in. As such, group members will look to you as the ‘voice of reason.’ (That’s really what scares you straight).

Wanted to bring this thread back up. I took my level 2 class this weekend with Silverton Avalanche School, and I can, without a doubt say that I would much rather have a level 2 in my pocket than an airbag (I have that as well). The class was extremely valuable, and highly recommended.

There is a slightly bias as well, because in Colorado, an airbag isn’t going to be as useful as in say Alaska. Lots of trees, and not a ton of high alpine riding throughout most of the year.

^^Dudethat PSTisgonnabesick! What happened?

Hans, hopefully this works! It was a 160cm length. Failed at 50cm into the cut, at the depth of 70cm, full block propagation. Slope angle was 20, so its not readily apparent that is slid, but it certainly collapses.