This episode features two interviews that discuss two new exciting products that will increase our safety in the backcountry. There is also a short intro discussing some of the lightest skimo racing gear that is currently available.
JetForce avalanche airbag
The JetForce is a first time avalanche airbag from Black Diamond and uses a fan to inflate the airbag. The fan is electrically powered with a rechargeable battery. This means you don’t need to replace and fill up any gas cylinders after deploying the airbag, just pack it up inside the backpack and it is ready to deploy again. Black Diamond says you can do four deployments on a fully charged battery.
» JetForce on Black Diamond website
AvaTech SP1 snow probe and AvaNET data sharing platform
The AvaTech Sp1 is a probe-like device that “…is designed to help professionals understand the snowpack more quickly, accurately and objectively, and then share that information with the broader mountain community…” through a cloud data sharing platform called AvaNET.
The SP1 is proactive snow safety device that reads snow pack structure, slope angle and aspect in seconds and uploads the data, along with GPS location, in real-time to the AvaNET server. This technology will dramatically increase the amount of data snow professionals can share and analyze, providing a unique geo-spatial database of crowd-sourced snowpack observations. Also, professionals will also be able to upload their own manual snowpack observations with AvaTech’s Snowpit Editor that also features geo-tagging, photo upload and multiple forms of data visualization.
However, it’s important to keep in mind, that the SP1 is not an avalanche probe and it doesn’t replace sound decision making. It is a snow analysis tool.
» AvaTech website
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