Over the weekend a Japanese friend of mine was talking to another Japanese boarder on a chairlift. My friend is a low intermediate riderat best but has ambitions to do lots of low angle BC riding rather than resort riding (one can hardly blame her). She started talking to the stranger about her ambitions and he was quite enthusiastic and encouraged her. One of his pieces of advice: carry a red cloth filled with sand so if you get caught in a slide you can throw it just before getting buried as beacons sometimes do not work and not all rescue people carry them anyway.

I hope that there aren't people out there subscribing to this method!

Actually I have heard of this - pretty old school and sounds like a piece of advice you would get on a chairlift from a Japanese ojisan. Having said that, the first Matchstick Productions ski movie; if you watch Dean Cummings segment - that is exactly what he has poking out from the top of his pack. I think they are called a 'tracer'.

An ojisan it was! She said he did not sound at all reckless, just that she was surprised at the method. He took her to a nice steep in-bounds 'black diamond' run that was quite untracked and reasonably deep which was a challenge at her standard and greatly appreciated. All up he sounded like a pretty cool old guy. Unfortunately 2 runs later she crashed and banged her knee up on a standard groomed run. As the patrol was arriving to collecting her on the snow mobile some other people ducked under a rope and hit some out-of-bounds. Apparently the patrol guy was yelling at them so much that he almost forgot to rescue her from the side of the piste. She now thinks that illegal rope duckers are distracting the patrol from important in-bounds rescue work (ie, herself). I thought it was quite amusing although I was more disappointed at the injury than she was as my vicarious Japanese season is on hold until the damage heals.

Havent heard of that and I cant see how it would help as a bag of sand will be buried along with you in all likelyhood. I have heard of an old technique using a long ribbon, in this case you attach the ribbon to yourself and hope that a part of it stays above the snow when the avalanche stops . Rescuers then dig up the remaining ribbon and hopefully you on the end of it. I wouldnt like to try it in this day and age. It sounds like it would be so time consuming that you would most likely be dead by the time they got to the end of the ribbon.

Ojisan? Anyone called me?

Sick Sense?
I think what Dean Cummings has on his bag is just a bamboo pole with red tape for the helicopter pilot to tell what way the wind is going.
Or maybe to mark a route through crevasses.

I think it's 'Ski Movie', the first one, Toque. I lent my copy to someone a few years ago and have never had it returned so I can't remember exactly. I'm pretty sure the bamboo with the ribbon is a tracer. The chopper pilots can feel where the wind is coming from by the way the chopper is flying and so far as marking a route, that's already well scoped by flyovers. However, I am not Dean Cummings and I wasn't there so all is open to interpretation.

i THINK ITS A BIT OF everything. Used to mark where he is and if he goes down the stick is poking out up high. Used as a way to find the last seen spot of the rider.

Way back when I did my avi stuff (mid-late eighties) there was a balloon release on a string method of location. I guess the beacons took over.

I like the modern version of that, that actually floats you on top of an avalanche... pity it's so bulky.

I'll give it a watch.
Won't have to twist my arm to see it.
I start every morning watching about 15 minutes of a ski movie.

I used to see him in still pictures with a bamboo in his pack. I think he did it for ages and might still do it.