[Two fatalities in Niseko (late January 2013)]

I'm not sure which are allowed in Japan and which not, but Dealextreme has quite big selection of all kind of walkie talkies

[Two fatalities in Niseko (late January 2013)]

 

I often worry about losing a friend in a tree well when skiing together. As I mentioned before, tree wells are a common hazard around where I ski. When skiing near tree wells it is safe practice to ski with partners and always keep in visual contact. In some places, however, the evergreen trees are so dense that you can’t see your partners after just a couple turns. We frequently have to shout to find each other again. We often have to stop and wait for others to come back into view. My fear is that one of my friends could have fallen into a tree well and started to asphyxiate while waiting for them. I would only realise that something is wrong after waiting for a while, wasting valuable search time. If you are buried in snow you asphyxiate very quickly. 93% of completely buried avalanche victims survive if they are dug out in 15 minutes but that drops to a 27% survival rate if they are buried for 35 minutes (Tremper 2001: pg. 11). Having to hike uphill through thigh to chest deep powder would make finding your friend within 15 minutes very difficult.

 

While skiing in Europe we have always used these small radio phones(PMR), which are very handy on this kind of situations also. These small PMR phones come in handy quite often in various situations when need to communicate with friends over some distance, ie. when skiing in dense forest/other side of ridge/knoll/etc. when distance is too big for shouting. I'd say that using these easily improves safety of you and your friends...

 

Before our trip to Niseko I found that at least the Australian PMR phones(477MHz frequency) are banned in Japan, because they are overlapping with TV frequencies. Euro versions are with different freq range(433MHz) that doesn't overlap TV frequencies, but couldn't find if those were banned also. From somewhere I found that only 420MHz PMR phones would be allowed in Japan. Does someone have relevant info which frequencies/types PMRs are allowed and which banned in Japan..?

[Two fatalities in Niseko (late January 2013)]

I've followed this thread on background, as the topic is interesting and discussion around it seems quite "vivid", also I was still skiing on the same region last week so it would be interesting to know what and where actually happened...

 

Regarding the original question that was presented in the first post, I heard some rumours on Finnish outdoor forum: Group of Finnish skiers(not involved in the accident) were skiing on that day in the Hanazono area, and they had spotted some ski-patrol activity "on the steeper part under the cat track, above the long traverse to Hanazono lift starts". According to the story, they had skied the same run just before the accident had happened. They had skied below the glide cracks and mentioned that it was probably impossible to see those from above. On next lift up they had noticed skipatrols leaving with snowmobiles to that direction and closing Gate 5. The group had skied under the 3 lift to cat track and saw there skipatrol on this "suspected accident location"...

 

 

Regarding the "carrying a rope" conversation, I think it is not overkill to put 15...20m piece of rope in your backpack, if you already carry one with showel, probe, duct tape(!), etc... Rope can come handy also on other situations than pulling people out from crevasses/glide cracks. Regarding the rope itself, I think some basic 6...8mm climbing rope would be the best option. Paracord(3-4mm thick?) that was mentioned here also, is likely a lot more difficult to use if/when you then actually need to use it. Imagine that you have to pull something heavy out from a crack with thin rope, with bare (and cold) hands it is very difficult to get any grip at all, with gloves on of course better, but still difficult(not saying it would be easy with that 8mm rope either, but easier)...