BCA Bomber Shovel review: fail,then fixed.
I have a weakness and it appears to be buying shovels that I do not need.
I recently bought the new BCA B2 Extension shovel http://www.backcountryaccess.com/product/b2-ext/
It has a flat blade with an angular bend, so it cuts a really clean pit wall. Ok, so that is a trivial feature. But I liked the size vs weight.
I was teaching an AST class today and it failed me big time.
1. the end of the shovel shaft is open (where it enters the blade slot). So when you dig, snow is forced into the shovel shaft with every single plunge of the shovel. Who designed that?! It packed in so tight that it jammed the U-shaped spring which the locking lugs are attached to. Every time after digging, I couldn't remove the blade without a lot of fucking around to clear the hard-packed snow from the exposed U-spring. This is a design flaw IMHO. At one stage I almost lost the U-spring and locking lugs in the shaft, which would have meant I could not attach the blade.
But it got me in the end...
2. due to reasons unclear, the lugs that lock the two shovel shafts sections together when extended became lost inside the shaft. I pushed them in to collapse the telescopic shaft, then when I tried to extend the shaft to use the shovel, I could not lock it in place. For the remainder of the day I could no longer lock the two shaft sections together, therefore could not use my shovel at all. Luckily this failure happened near the end of the day.
I do not recommend the BCA bomber series of shovels for anyone who works in the snow with their shovel out, nor for avalanche class student shovels. I teach 10-12 AST classes a year and dig 80-100 days as a volunteer scribe for a local avalanche organisation. I wont be using BCA. Even if they were free.
Did BCA honestly test these shovels in the hands of people who actually use them numerous times a day?
I dug two profiles, demonstrated chopping blocks once, buried my backpack three times, and joined in as a digger on one companion rescue. And the BCA shovel was not even up to that minor workload. Today was a little below freezing, snowing moderately. Snow pack is high water content.
And yes, it cuts a very clean pit wall. It also doesn't have a long neck-socket on the blade meaning it takes up less room in your pack. I really liked that (for the one day I carried it)