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smashy_smashy t1_jamybih wrote

Reply to comment by papoosejr in Huge avalanche engulfs snowboarder on New Hampshire mountain, dramatic video shows by manbunsandkayaks

Having extensive avy training and being involved in some skier trigger slides, I can give you an honest answer. Far more important than getting good footage is immediately assess for secondary avalanches and determine if you are in a safe zone. Then you want to prepare to switch your own beacon to search mode and initiate a search - but you don’t want to switch if you are at risk of being hit by a secondary avalanche. You want to assess how you are going to safely get to the runout to initiate a search, without avalanching anyone else down there before you. Basically, there are a lot more important things to do than catch good footage when you are near a slide like this. Of course from a curiosity standpoint and an educational standpoint, I also want good footage, but I understand why the cameraman had other things on their mind.

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papoosejr t1_jan0wo4 wrote

Fair enough. I was also thinking "keep track of where the snowboarder ends up", but I guess that's what the beacon is for.

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smashy_smashy t1_jan26dj wrote

Nope that is absolutely correct and a major thing you should do when observing an avalanche. You often float on top of an avalanche until it slows down so you can get a really good idea of where the burial is and that’s a good starting point for a search (you still search the whole area in case there are multiple burials). For me personally, it’s much better to have my eyes on an event, than looking at it through the screen of my phone I’m recording on

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FlyingLemurs76 t1_jaoe0zu wrote

Something I've been pondering... do you assess the risk of hangfire before going to search, or is it somewhat just accepted due to the severity of the situation? I don't remember AIARE discussing it much.

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