Two snowboarders and a skier were reportedly in the Gore Mountain Range when they triggered a “Class 3 Avalanche” on January 16, 2009. All three men were buried for at least an hour before one managed to dig out, according to a story in the Aspen Times. They survived thanks to a device called an Avalung.
According to the report, the longest and deepest burial lasted 2 hours, 15 minutes (determined with the aid of digital photo time stamps) under about 7 feet of snow. . . . Other than a guardian angel, Sawtell believes one thing the men had going for them was preparation. All were equipped with the standard backcountry snow tools of avalanche beacons, shovels and probe poles. . . . But perhaps equally significant was they all had an AvaLung, invented in 2000 by Denver psychiatry professor and backcountry skiing enthusiast Tom Crowley. Black Diamond spent a half-million dollars making the design practical, and the version on the market now — AvaLung II — came out in 2001.
Sounds a little like a Black Diamond ad to us.
[Link: Aspen Times]
