non-avalanche burial incident

Just bought some whistles at westmarine. $5.99 for 2. Horrid orange color, but hey, they come with a lanyard! So the question is, where's the best place to carry it presuming your mobility is extremely limited when you're stuck in deep snow?

Yikes, glad to hear you're OK Corey!!!<br><br>

So the question is, where's the best place to carry it presuming your mobility is extremely limited when you're stuck in deep snow?

<br><br>I'd say one one of the D-rings or something else on your backpack strap, as close to your face as possible.  if it's tied on with elastic, it wont flop around too much but youll still be able to access it.  <br><br>great idea, I think I'll be getting one now after reading this.  I can actually whistle pretty damn loud with two fingers in my mouth, but sometimes ya just don't-wanna-deal with taking gloves off.  <br>

Some of the newer BD packs have them built into the sternum strap. Seems to work OK, but rather akward to get to if you were in a bad way....

During a December Skyline ridge trip, I was having some skin problems and my partner got ahead of me and went the wrong way. He got up over a convex rise in the slope 100 feet above me, and I couldn't climb up after him to get him to come back. I had a sternum strap whistle and a WM style beefier one. After 20 minutes of blowing both whistles, he came back to check on me, but not because he heard the whistle. The sternum strap whistle seemed to be only 1/3 or so as powerful as the other. In a treewell/ burial situation, I wonder how much whistle sound would penetrate to the surface, and then how much of that would be audible more than 50 ft away.

Thanks for all the insightful comments. I think carrying a whistle is a great idea, and certainly not very expensive. For me to be able to use it in this situation it would have had to have been right by my face, possibly attached to the main zipper of my jacket because my arms and torso were immobilized. It seemed like I could move my feet a little, but not enough to free myself.<br><br>I think one of the reasons I went in so far (apart of course from the deepness of the snow and the fairly high amount of force that I impacted with) was that I ass-checked the landing and was not in a completely upright position. I wasn't in a completely seated position, but rather somewhere inbetween. Both of my skis ejected on the landing and we did spend some time digging for one of them until another friend passed by and noticed it much farther down the hill. There was a light crust from before the recent snow but I pretty much blasted through it.<br><br>I was carrying a shovel, but Kevin (different Kevin than the fireman from Hyak btw) was not. He freed me using his hands I believe. My head could not have been more than 6-8" underneath the snow, but trust me - that's plenty. I try to always have the full kit of avy gear in frontcountry situations, but there have definately been situations where I didn't think the BC would open so I went out without my pack and then ended up skiing without it. In fact I believe that probably fewer than 50% of folks in the Alp BC do not carry shovels even though many if not most do have beacons. It may even be as low as 20% or less. I'm not defending it and do think that evryone probably should have a shovel (Kevin commented that he'd be carrying one after this), just that currently many do not, so it was not really abnormal for him to not have one.

glad your ok.