Avalanche Safety Device tested PART TWO

[jtwassoc]

.................................

[jtwassoc]

And that's all she wrote.........

[jtwassoc]

The chopper had to head back to Revelstoke after this avalanche, so two of our crew (extremely experienced ski guides) dropped over the edge and skied down to the debris field of the slide. It doesn't look very far down there in the last series of picks, but it took two primo skiers 45 minutes to get down there...........the mountains in British Columbia are completely challanging.

[jtwassoc]

Adam headed towards Memorial Day festivities............

[jtwassoc]

Shots of the damage to Adam......

He weighs so much 'cause he's full of these little ball bearings.

[jtwassoc]

Your gaping neck hole where his head used to be pics.....





And of course your basic "arms torn off at the elbows" shots.......

[edg]

bumpbump (this is actually a sweet thread)

[hemas]

I want your job!

[jtwassoc]

Both good news and bad news out of the mountains near Revelstoke, British Columbia this past weekend. A search crew led by Incline Research and Selkirk Mountain Helicopters went out to the Test One Avalanche debris field and the Test Three debris field to look for any body parts from our two test dummies Adam and Eve. First the bad news. We thought from looking at our Test Three video (the one where the bomb accidentally landed right next to Eve and blew her sky high) that Eve had somehow been blown into the air in one piece. Wrong. What looks like a vapor trail following Eve through the air is actually a stream of ball bearings emptying out of her torso as apparently Eve was blown in half. The search crew spent hours collecting the mess and what was left of Eve, which was not a whole lot. The lift bag was also disintegrated by the blast, with only small one inch pieces remaining. The snow is still too deep in the valley to effectively search for Eve’s head and other body parts, but an attempt will be made later this year. Here is the pic of Eve blown airborne by the bomb, with the ball bearings spewing from her gaping upper torso. Fifty pound bomb one, Eve zero.

The crew found much more encouraging carnage at the Test One avalanche site. This is the class three slide that took Adam for a 1000 foot ride and then slammed him into a four foot diameter pine tree and buried him under 8 feet of snow. All of Adam’s arms and legs were found on the hill, and we will provide a map showing the location of all the parts when we can. Also nice to report, Adam’s head was recovered. It’s great to have the head back with us, and we’re going to retire it so it doesn’t get lost again. Most importantly for us the lift bag was found intact (deflated) just downhill from Adam’s torso. So we can assume that the lift bag served its purpose by keeping Adam aloft and near the leading edge of the slide, all the way to the bottom. When he slammed into the tree at 110 miles an hour and stopped, the avalanche tore the lift bag free from the harness and carried it downhill.



Thanks to Peter at Incline, pilot Chris from Selkirk Choppers, Jordy from Revelstoke and Brent from the CAA for digging around for test dummy body parts on a beautiful Saturday morning…….

[jtwassoc]

The best half of Eve sailing through the air and recklessly spewing ball bearings. Look out below......

[tweaks_rock_me]

i love it.

[Meathelmet]

Jtwassoc, thanks for the stuff.

I heart dummies getting blown up and put in awkward places (á la mythbusters and now this..).

But it is really sobering to watch the effects on the doll. Not eve but Adam.
It a sober reminder of the consequenses.



Thanks again,for the pic series too.

[jtwassoc]

Well, Adam's head, some body parts, some of Eve's body parts, some yet to be identified body parts, and various other goodies just arrived here on the Minnesota prairie from Revelstoke, British Columbia. Oh, and some kick ass GPS mapping of the parts on the slide paths, and some pretty cool photos of the body parts on the hill before retrieval (thanks Brent S of the CAA) arrived as well. We will post the maps and pics soon, if anybody is still reading this avy stuff in August.............

[jtwassoc]

Some Pictures of the recovery effort.............

First some pictures of the damage done to Eve by accidently dropping the bomb in her lap as she sat on the hill. You can see in these first photos Eve's skeleton, spine and upper leg bones made of aluminum and steel. Eve was blown to bits and her plastic torso was seperated from her metal skeletal structure. Her upper and lower arm remain attached to the skeleton, and the harness for the lift bag is still attached..........

[jtwassoc]

.....and here are some of Eve's various body parts strewn about the slide path. Traveling down the face of the mountain with the disintegrated Eve was the shredded bright red lift bag (note searcher rear upper left of pic for scale), and pieces of the exploded avalanche beacon (blue piece below).

[jtwassoc]

Once the majority of the lady was recovered it was off to find Adam's remains from the first test avalanche. The arced branch over the head of the searchers is the branch that caught Adam and stopped him as the avalanche passed by. As you can see there was an enormous amount of snow in the avalanche.

Here is the slide path in the summer.....



Adam's legs all packed up.......





Searcher with Adam's remains.......



Branch that stopped Adam......

[jtwassoc]

Adam's severed head was finally located.

Thanks again to Incline Research, Selkirk Heli, Brent and everybody else....









When we get the body parts and lift bag pieces mapped out we will post it.

[splat]

What's to be learned here besides the body-shredding capabilty of an avie and the server-clogging capability of the array of pics loading on TGR when you could have asked someone how to post a link to the vid - both of which are obvious?

Yeah, new avie info is nice, but I gotta JONG you on the method of presentation.

On another note, what ever happened to Alan Dennis after he left CAA?

[jtwassoc]

Well Splat, we thought we learned a lot about avalanches this past winter, and we wouldn’t call anything obvious. At what point does an avalanche tear a body apart? Class three? Yep. Class two avalanche? Nope. Two years ago a series of class two slides did no damage whatsoever to the test dummies, but the class three slides tore the dummies to shreds. So just where is the point that a slide destroys a victim or merely buries them? What is the avalanche speed at that point? What is the length of slide at that point? What number of metric tons of snow moved is at that point? It’s somewhere between a class 2 and a class 3, but just where? We are just trying to learn something about avalanche survivability.

As far as our presentation goes these are not frames from a video camera, these are all still photos taken with a telephoto lens. Some people have told us they can learn something about slides by examining the sequential pics. As far as the server getting clogged, TGR can and probably will delete anything that messes with their server……

[jtwassoc]

Craving to cradle Adam's severed head in your lap? Always wanted to see his limbless torso? Here's your chance. Adam (what's left of him) is going to be at ISSW in Telluride in a few weeks and we are throwing a party for him on October 2. Yea, its a Monday. Who parties on a Monday? ISSW attendees, that's who. Stop by for all the beer you can consume and meet our fearless avalanche test dummy.

Address: #133 Pine Meadows

[Buzzworthy]

Craving to cradle Adam's severed head in your lap? Always wanted to see his limbless torso? Here's your chance. Adam (what's left of him) is going to be at ISSW in Telluride in a few weeks and we are throwing a party for him on October 2. Yea, its a Monday. Who parties on a Monday? ISSW attendees, that's who. Stop by for all the beer you can consume and meet our fearless avalanche test dummy.

Address: #133 Pine Meadows

Dude, I will be there and I want a pic with what is left of Adam!!! Can Eve make the event at all?

And while it is a long pic thread, I found it interesting. The force of frozen water is unreal, not Mr. Tuxedo either. His forces are hard to recon with as well.

[jtwassoc]

Here are the final body part location maps from last winter's testing. Sorry they took so long, but we only finally received them at ISSW in Telluride last month. (For those who don't know, ISSW is the International Snow Sciences Workshop held every other year to study avalanches)

First off, here is avalanche number one, a monster class three that damn near caught a couple of us and totally dismembered test dummy Adam. The shredded red lift bag is the farthest mark out at the stopped leading edge of the avalanche. Adam's head is the next mark up the mountain. Each of the other marks is either an arm, a leg, or some other piece of Adam.

[jtwassoc]

Here's the third test where the bomb was tossed out of the helicopter and slid down the mountain, coming to a stop right next to Eve. Those had to be some long last moments for Eve, watching that fuse smoke away. Anyway, as stated earlier she was blown to kingdom come. Each of the marks on the hill are various chunks of Eve and her equipment. Rest in Peace both of you.....

By the way, the promised video of the testing will not be posted here as some of our team members think shouts of "RUN, DROP THE CAMERA, RUN!!!!!" shed a sort of idiots in the woods vibe, instead of a mountain professional vibe. Hence the video was deep sixed.......

[eirikainersharp]

Are you guys going to be publishing this data? I havn't heard of any other quantative studies that deal with trauma and avalanches. I would be very interested if you do.

[jtwassoc]

We are talking about publishing something concerning the flotation capabilities of lift bags (called inverse grading) at the next ISSW in two years. We want to get more data before we do publish, so testing will continue this winter and next. We weren't thinking about mentioning anything about the characteristics of crash dummy dismembering, if that's what you are asking. We've only destroyed the dummies in two out of many test avalanches. Of course Adam was dismembered by the class three slide, and Eve was dismembered by a 50 pound bomb, so our data is minimal. We are also only going after class 2 avalanches this year, as these are the slides more often encountered by back country users, and we don't anticipate destroying any more $900 crash test dummies. What we can determine with some degree of certainty is that if you are in a class 2 avalanche you may have a chance, and if you are in a class 3 avalanche you can kiss your tush goodbye.

What we have so far is:

Three seperate class 2 avalanches rolled over snowmobiles both with and without 20 cubic foot lift bags (5 x 4 x 1 foot donut shaped inflatable).

Three seperate class 2 avalanches rolled over 190 pound crash test dummies both with and without 3 cubic foot lift bags.

Three seperate class 3 avalanches rolled over 190 pound crash test dummies both with and without 3 cubic foot lift bags.

Early analysis of the results indicates that an avalanche flotation device will indeed provide the victim with both flotation to the surface of the moving slide, and a retarding or breaking effect on the victim, slowing their movement down the hill.