Where to Ski And Snowboard -

Mammut’s safety kit

17th August 2010, by Wendy King

The probe

If you’re heading off-piste, you’ll need a few essential bits of kit to help keep you safe. Mammut has designed a “snow safety pack” – four tough pieces of gear that are lightweight and easily transportable: a shovel, probe, transceiver and gadget-minded backpack to carry them. Oh, and there’s an i-phone app too …

Master of all bags

The Nirvana Pro backpack comes in two sizes: 35, 25 – and retails around £100, £115
This high performance touring/freeride backpack is suitable for ski or snowboard tours of one or more days. It has been designed with comfort and functionality as priority and is packed with features, including:

• Back padding, hip and shoulder belts with laminated stretch fabric cover
• Fully zipped access into the main compartment from the back even with a snowboard attached to the front.
• Ski attachment that can be used on the side or diagonally
• Front pocket for avalanche safety equipment
• Helmet carrier with 4 front gear loops for fixation
• Attachments for ice axe and trekking poles

Go dig

The Alugator light shovel costs about £40. The hardened and anodized aluminium blade and two-piece telescopic aluminium shaft is triangular-shaped for an easy grip. It weighs in at 600g, making it a lightweight shovel with a stable design. And it packs down to 21.5cmx43cm/ blade area: 21.5cm x 26cm.

Go probe

Looking for someone buried in an avalanche, a probe is a useful addition. The Probe Light 6-piece avalanche probe is made from aluminium and weighs 210g, so lightweight. Thanks to an improved telescopic lock it is even safer and easier to operate with gloves on. The probe costs about £40.

Transmitting

We’ve covered the Pulse Barryvox transceiver before. But this piece of technical gear is one of the best in its class. It’ll set you back around £300, but it handles single and multiple burial tracking with the ability to select and lock on to subjects one at a time. The user friendly ‘map view’ display gives an overview of the rescue scene with the number of locations of each buried victim. It is designed to optimise rescue efforts in the first critical 20 minutes of burial and allows you to monitor heartbeats to help prioritise rescue.

i-phone application

Mammut has also released an i-phone application to help you along too … it features a clinometer to estimate the slope angle, a compass to determine the slope exposition, and an altimeter. It also links to all the avalanche bulletins worldwide and the personal safety equipment requirements.

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• avalanche
• safety
• mammut

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