Anyone wearing the Avalung?

Ok... first of all, I admit I'm a gear junkie. If I hiked with all the gear I have, I wouldn't get out of the parking lot. <br><br>Anyway, with my REI rebate in my hot little hands, I splurged it all on the Black Diamond Avalung. I had some rebate left over, so I also picked up the Feb 05 Powder mag and the Winter 2005 Couloir Backcountry Adventure mag.<br><br>I looked through these mags to see if there were any pictures of someone wearing the Avalung. Spotted, in the Couloir mag article on Skins, two guys wearing the 'lung, cool! <br><br>Overall, it seems the 'lung is not a fashion item in the mags. Couloir also mentioned Carl and Lowell Skoog in a big article on Jackson Hole bc skiing. <br><br>The Powder Mag has a dramatic layout on Mt. St. Helens skiing.<br><br>So I tried on this 'lung job and determined that I could just lower my head and grab that mouth piece pretty fast. Now, I know that we want to avoid avalanches, not body surf them. But, I was wondering what you guy thought of this item?

I don't like excess gear, but I heard Bruce Tremper uses one, so I got one. I've heard that Black Diamond actually have some favorable stat's now?

Here's a great read if you've even considered one<br><br>www.wildsnow.com/articles/avalung/avalun...alanche-article.html

Gib - Thanks for the article, great read. However, I wonder if this guy knew that he was taking on more risk than he should have. Seems to me they knew that avy conditions were critical. <br><br>Anyway, I think the article had some good pointers on how to use the Avalung.<br><br>- Bite on it asap.<br>- Use a hand to keep it in place.<br>- Keep a full chest of air to reserve space for breathing under the snow.<br><br>Interesting that he could hear so much, and also over his radio.<br><br>

Very interesting article - thanks for the link. In addition to the comments on the Avalung, I found the following to also be interesting (and a seeming confirmation of what I've heard elsewhere):<br>"Andreas had this small Ortovox plastic shovel with the red blade, and Erik had a bigger aluminum folding shovel. They told me afterward that they would never be able to dig me out from where I was laying. After digging 1 meter deep, they were totally exhausted and the snow was too hard for the light shovels."<br><br>While you're pondering an Avalung purchase, use some of that safety-conscious energy to also test your own shovel on some firm, dry-snow avy debris! Can you move snow as quickly as you'd like? And while you're at it, try using your probe in the concrete snow (especially if you are trusting probe poles to do the trick). (sorry for minor thread drift - but this was hard to resist given the quote from the article).<br><br>Back to the original question posed - I have not thought a ton about buying one of these, in part from being at least moderately conservative in slope choices, in part from wanting to avoid impedimentia, and in part from the fact that I tend to run hot and add-remove top layers fairly often (my SLR camera's chest harness is already quite a butt in this regard, speaking of impedimentia). Not necessarily the optimal safety choice, but there you are.

I have a two piece aluminum shovel... I learned while digging out a tent hole near Anvil Rock, in hard snow, not to use the shovel to pry up snow. Prying just bends the handle. I had to use my ice axe to chop up the snow first, then use the shovel to move it. Perhaps the patrol guys in the article had real heavy duty shovels.<br><br>I've shoveled out tent pads a few times and it's pretty hard work. <br><br>Nice thing about the Avalung is that it is almost no weight, a few oz. The only real block is that it cost $114.00. And nobody really thinks they are going to be the one who gets buried. <br><br>The literatature that comes with the Avalung mentions falling into tree holes and such. At least two people have died in the last couple of years in the NW after falling into tree holes and suffocating. So there is another risk to consider.

I've been wearing one for the past couple of seasons, though haven't as yet had to chug dear air from it in the backcountry. I've all hopes to keep it that way, but I like it being strapped on should the need for it arise.<br><br>It's been a while since I bought it, but I did beforehand do a fair amount of research into the matter. At that point, there were a small handful of documented cases I could find where it was used in a full burial where someone was dug out. One in particular I recall was a deep burial where the guy had given up hope of being saved and, in thinking his friends had all been buried also, spit the tube out of his mouth after several minutes; his friends uncovered him unconscious after something like 25 minutes and revived him. He credited his being saved to the several minutes he was breathing through his Avalung prior to giving up hope (itself an instructive moral of the story). Armed with that and only a couple other favorable testimonies, I decided if there's something I can carry that will give me even a slightly better chance of survival in a full burial, then I should do it. <br><br>That said, it is a pain, especially considering I almost always ski with my SLR in a chest bag. Between those two items and my packstraps, it can be a challenge to get and stay situated, especially with the exersion of the uptrack. All in all, however, it's not that big of deal--even if it feels like it is some mornings. If I had to be entirely honest, the camera's the more annoying of the two if I had to choose.<br><br>The compromise I make is that I typically only carry the Avalung when and where there's an increased risk. If we're skiing in the trees or on hardpack & corn, I tend to leave it at home.<br>