The burial victim would have died - A learning to use my avy gear TR.
After reading Trackhead's thread about touring partners, I decided the time to practice with my avalanche tools had come. Saturday, when I asked a patroller about the beacon park at The Canyons, he said it was still out of service. He did, however, tell me the patrol stations at the top of each lift typically buries a beacon and they take turns finding and re-burying the beacon throughout the day. I asked the patrollers at the Tombstone chair about their buried beacon and they looked at me very suspiciously. When I explained that I wanted to practice using my beacon, they told me what run to go down and asked me to re-bury the beacon should I find it. Not quite a needle in a haystack, but probably not unlike showing up on the scene of an avalanche after the fact.
I started receiving a signal after zig-zagging two thirds down the run. Unfortunately, I stopped in the trees about twenty or thirty feet below where the beacon was buried. As I hiked back up the hill in sugary snow and breakable crust, I couldn't help but think about someone dying a slow death as I slogged up the hill. Using a Tracker was helping a neophyte like myself find the buried beacon, but the conditions were making it difficult to reach the victim to start digging.
While I think practicing in a beacon park, like those at Snowbird and The Canyons, is valuable; it was just that little bit more real world trying to find a buried beacon on an open run. I can only imagine the panic and fear that must set in when faced with an actual burial victim.
I know I have more work to do.