December 2010 archive

Review: Ortovox Kodiak Shovel

…if you’re ever involved in an avalanche rescue, you’ll wish you had a backhoe you could fire up right then just by spitting on some dehydrated backhoe crystals. Until you can beam one in from an app on your iPhone, a collapsible, human-powered hoe is the next best thing.

The Kodiak keeps the hoe option, but you change the orientation of the blade by connecting the shaft through a vertical or perpendicular yoke at the top of the blade. It’s a solid connection.

The Human Snow Conveyor

A strategy for shoveling snow with measurable improvement. Practicing how to locate a buried victim with an avalanche beacon has become common protocol in avalanche courses, and to a lesser extent, by private parties. However, in the case of a real rescue, locating victims can be accomplished relatively quickly (assuming everyone in the group is …

Keep making backcountry turns