Avalanche practise

Today (the 10th) we practiced some avalanche rescue procedures. Before we went on this adventure we both bought a complete avalanche set consisting of a probe, a shovel and a beeper. The shovel needs no introduction. The probe is similar to a tent pole but extracts more quickly and is held together with a particular release system. The probe is used to locate the buried person in an avalanche once you have pinned down where to search with you beeber.
A beeper is more correctly called a transceiver, indicating that it can both transmit and receive signals. All beepers no matter what brand transmits and receives on the same frequency (457 kHz). In case an avalanche goes off, and one of your mates gets buried the rest of us will take out our beepers and switch to receiving mode. We will then sweep down the mountain in a snake like line, until we catch a signal wich we will then use to guide us toward the victim. As a rule of thumb it can take a maximum of 15 minutes to find a person, or his chances of survival drops drastically.
Of course you don't want to start figuring out how your beeper works when you actually need to find someone, so practising under more controlled circumstances is key.
We did this by taking turns in burying a backpack with a beeper somewhere near our apartment for the other one to find. The first attempt took about 20 minutes but whe we stopped a couple of hours later, we were both able to find the bag in about 3 minutes.

Of course we hope never to be in a situation where we will need this equipment, but I guess it's a bit like a car. You never hope to use the airbag neither, but it's sure good to have.