Avalanche beacons are a crucial part of backcountry skiing. However, even if the devices have saved many lives already, we haven’t yet reached the pinnacle (pun intended) of the technology’s potential.
Students at OSU Cascades are working to change that, though. As the Central Oregon Daily News reports, what started as a class project could lead to the development of technology that will save the lives of skiers trapped in tree wells.
Though avalanches are perhaps the most headline-grabbing threat to the backcountry skier, tree wells also pose a distinct risk. They form when snow accumulates around the base of a tree but not beneath its lower branches or close to the trunk. This creates a deep, hidden hole that can lead to snow-immersion suffocation if a skier falls in headfirst.
The students’ experimental device, called the Tree Well Guardian, sends out an emergency alert with GPS coordinates when someone gets stuck in a tree well. The final product will be about the same size as an avalanche beacon, and a companion app is also in the works.
“This would be attached to your ski boot and if you are flipped upside down, representing a tree well immersion, it would give you 10 seconds to turn it off so we would avoid any false alarms,” explained OSU-Cascades student Makani Hiltner. “It would give you a beep. That lets you know that it’s gonna enter the alarm mode and then it would give you another 10 seconds to let you turn it off again, make sure that we’re not getting false alarms.”
As co-creator Hunter Erhard explained, the concept came about as both a result of recent headlines and the students’ own personal experience. “The idea first kind of came about when Makani and I were having a conversation about some of the recent deaths that had taken place up at Mount Bachelor that were tree related,” he said. “And actually, both of our dads had said something to us about why isn’t there some kind of device that would help with tree wells or people dying in tree wells or getting stuck in tree wells.”
View this post on Instagram
