Blog

2011 Training at Silverton Mountain

Here’s a guest post from Kenny Bloggins, writer and guide at my second-favorite resort in North America (you’ll have to guess the first): Silverton Mountain, Colorado. Kenny’s pseudonym is Alex Hunt, or is it the other way around? Anyway, Silverton is getting pounded today and opens this Saturday. If you’re a skier’s skier and you haven’t been to Silverton, put it on your tick list. The terrain is awesome and the attitude is extremely refreshing. No BS here, just great snow, great terrain, and diehard skiers.

The Cement Creek drainage just North of Silverton has been echoing over the last few days from the avalanche explosive testing at Silverton Mountain… Read more

BCA Goes to Japan!

I’m just back from an epic week in Tokyo visiting our Japanese distributor and the Caravan sales agents. I can’t say enough about how completely awesome this experience was. The folks that run BCA Japan are completely dialed! The entire trip was organized from the moment I stepped off the plane and there wasn’t a second wasted.… Read more

KGB Productions brings ‘Wyoming Triumph’ on tour

Our friends to the north at KGB Productions have been hard at work on their latest epic flick, Wyoming Triumph, and it looks to have paid off. Check out the short video below for some avalanche avoidance refreshment, then make sure to come see Wyoming Triumph when it comes through your town (full dates below). BCA will be at the Boulder showing on December 1, be sure to stop by and check out our new gear!

Heads up: this video contains explicit language

TOUR DATES:

ALL SHOW TIMES ARE 7:30PM UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED
ALL TICKETS ARE $10

SAT OCT 15 JACKSON HOLE, WY PINK GARTER PLAY HOUSE
Benefit: www.treefight.org
THURS… Read more

Kitzbuhel avalanche: the ultimate airbag test

We don’t normally make a habit of promoting our competitors, but in this case, they deserve huge credit. At a recent gathering of outdoor retailers in Stockholm, Sweden, organizer Bengt Klingheim (Swedish distributor of both BCA and ABS airbags) invited a local avalanche survivor to recount her miraculous recovery last year in Austria. The incident is one more piece of very convincing evidence that avalanche airbags truly work.

The guest speaker, 30-year-old Stina Sletterström, was caught in an avalanche while skiing off-piste near Kitzbuhel Austria in February of 2010. Unfortunately, her presentation was in Swedish, so I didn’t get much out of it–although, like most American males in Sweden, I… Read more

Guides and airbags: a new “standard of care?”

At the 2011 meeting of the International Commission on Alpine Rescue (ICAR), an interesting question from the Norwegian delegate turned heads: “Is it ethical for a guide to use an airbag, but not offer one to all of his clients?”

It’s a legitimate question, especially considering some conclusive evidence at the meeting, held last month in Are, Sweden. The Italian delegate, Stefano Pivot, described several airbag success stories in his country, including one guide whose life was saved with an ABS airbag. His client, however, was caught in the same avalanche, but was not equipped with an airbag—and wasn’t so lucky.

Norwegian delegate Albert Lunde described an incident in the… Read more

Beacon me up Scotty! Glenmore Lodge opens world’s first dryland transceiver park.

What’s more fun than a 21-year Balvenie single malt? How about beacon searching in a deluxe training park in the Scottish Highlands? The world’s first dryland beacon training park opened up this week in the Cairngorms region near Aviemore Scotland. Located at SportScotland’s National Outdoor Training Centre at Glenmore Lodge, the site was officially dedicated on Tuesday by Shona Robison, Scotland’s Minister for Commonwealth Games and Sport. It was covered by a myriad of UK media. The site consists of a BCA Beacon Training Park with four transmitters covered in two to three feet of wood chips. The control panel is housed in an impressive stone console built by the… Read more

First-Annual Eastern Snow & Avalanche Workshop (“ESAW”)

Here’s a guest blog from Jonathan Shefftz on the first annual Eastern Snow and Avalanche Workshop in New Hampshire. Jonathan lives in western Massachusetts, where he patrols at Northfield Mountain and Mount Greylock. He is an AIARE and National Ski Patrol avalanche instructor, diehard rando racer, and “beacon geek of the East.” When he’s not searching out elusive freshies in Southern New England, he works as a financial economics consultant.

Snow? Check. Mountains with above-treeline terrain? Check? Avalanches? Check. Avalanche fatalities? Check (unfortunately). USFS forecast center? Check? Avalanche safety courses affiliated with NSP, AIARE, AAA, and even CAA? Check. Professional AMGA mountain guides? Check. Multi-agency and volunteer SAR teams? Check.… Read more

Electronic Production: Shockingly Well Grounded

Tis the season when us outdoorsmen (and women) trade in our mountain bikes and climbing shoes for skis and snowboards, eagerly awaiting the impending snowfall. To ensure your safety on the slopes this year, we here at BCA are busy as ever making the products you have come to trust. Since 1997 our Electronic Production department has been hard at work finding a perfect balance between reliability and usability for our avalanche transceivers and this drive for perfection has paid off. With the release of our DTS Tracker, the world’s first ever digital avalanche transceiver, BCA earned a reputation for ingenuity and simplicity of design, one that has since made… Read more

La Nina: Part 2 of “The Big 1-2″

This is the time of year when diehards are making their plans for hut trips,
road trips, and powder chasing. My advice: go north. According to Joe Ramey
from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center in Grand Junction, CO, we’re in for
a second year of La Nina. That was his conclusion at the recent Colorado Snow and
Avalanche Workshop in Leadville.

According to Joe, ocean temperatures in the equatorial East Pacific (off the
coast of Peru) are colder than average. This means the jet stream will most
likely swing through the Pacific Northwest and favor the northern mountains–instead of coming straight in
from the west as it does in El… Read more

The Human Factor – by Donny Roth

BCA Ambassador Donny Roth skis all year round as an athlete, guide, and educator. He runs the website Alpine Ambitions (.com) and owns Chile Powder Adventures – a guide service dedicated to human-powered skiing in Chile.

The mountains in Colorado are seeing more frequent snowstorms.  There are even a few chairlifts are turning.  The mornings are cooler, and the days are shorter.  Winter is coming.

As a professional skier, guide, and educator, my fall is dedicated to preparing for the coming winter.  As I am preparing for the normal round of avalanche education courses to lead in the early season, my thoughts continually gravitate back to recent experiences with a… Read more