Welcome to Louis (Lou) Dawson's backcountry skiing information & opinion website. Lou's passion for the past 50 years has been alpinism, climbing, mountaineering and skiing -- along with all manner of outdoor recreation. He has authored numerous books and articles about
ski touring and is well known as the first person to ski down all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, otherwise known as the
Fourteeners! Books and free ski touring news and information here.
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Funny you should mention electronic locators… I was just researching these ( http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=671 ) today. While this isn’t a beacon by any means it looks like it has potential as a trail tracker. I would like to get one simply to know how fast (or slow) I was going at any particular point on a trail. and the Google earth feature is nice. It’s pretty bare bones so the possiblites for water proofing are endless I suppose. Anyways… enjoy.
Nice idea – shame it’s using the 2.45Ghz band, same as a microwave oven:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven
It’s likely to perform poorly through snow as lots of the available energy will be used to heat up the snow.
I like the idea of using RFID style technology to identify individual victims. It could even be extended to allow people to search for lost skis etc as a ski would be completely differently identified to a person. The advantage would be more practice especially for new powder skiers! Some detail required here to ensure that people don’t find the ski and leave the victim.