If avalanche beacons constantly transmit signals by default, then how can you pinpoint a specific victim?

Question

To be more specific, if your not dealing with a large emergency, like an avalanche, and you only have one person to locate, how effective is an avalanche beacon? Hypothetically, lets say your at a ski resort, and on a given trail area 20 people have beacons and are all set to transmit (I was told this is a good practice, because in the event of an emergency, you may not be able to turn on your beacon due to an injury), however, your buddy goes off and gets stuck at the base of a tree just off the trail. You don't know where he is, you just assume he's stuck near the trail you last saw him on. If you set your beacon to receive, could you effectively locate you buddy using avalanche beacons? If so, how do you avoid the signals of the other 18 people with beacons?

Answer 1

Where to start...  First, it is good practice to always have your beacon turned on and set to transmit any time you are wearing it, and you're right that this is because if you are injured, you might not be able to turn it on, and if you're buried in an avalanche, you definitely won't be able to turn it on.  But the answer is that you cannot 'avoid' the signals of the other beacons.

The exception is that if you are searching for multiple persons, many newer beacons allow you to mark that person after you find them.  This will ignore that signal so you can look for the next person.  I have a Pieps DSP, which will tell you if there are 1, 2, or 3 or more people buried within range.

Which is the next point... in order to find your buddy by the tree at the bottom of the run, you need to be within range of his signal.  Most beacons have a range of 30-50 meters.  If he's not in that range, you won't get a signal.  If he's in range, it will tell you your distance from him, and then while you're searching, you're essentially playing 'hotter, colder' trying to minimize the distance until you find his position.

But again, there's no way to ignore the 18 other beacons.  For this reason, when there's an emergency and someone is lost or buried, everyone in the group will switch their beacons to search and spread out to cover the area starting where he was last seen.  In your scenario, you would need to get the attention of the 18 people, tell them that your friend was on the trail but you were afraid he hit a tree and ask them to switch their beacons to search.  Then you'd be able to find him.

Other things to think about are that it takes a lot of practice to be good at using a beacon, so you should practice a lot before you use it, and constantly throughout the season, just to keep sharp.  You can practice without a hill, even without snow.  Just have a friend hide a beacon or two in a park and go find them.

Long winded answer, but I think it's important to understand how beacons work if you're going to depend on them in an emergency.  I hope this helps.

Answer 2

safety no after shots!!!!