I don't know why people do this. First off it is never safe for 2 people to be climbing the same hill at once. How hard is it to wait to ensure 2 people are not buried. Second why are they even climbing in HIGH AVY danger? Sad how many people are dying this year.
https://www.ksl.com/article/46486109/crews-searching-for-southern-utah-snowmobiler-lost-in-avalanche?fbclid=IwAR3FVzJpX7X5t3QAjsoZgd5oKWDD11MVgpx3NOwrQwiMgfUm7NOEtMgwbm4
this was a fast dog find. only took 3 minutes once the dog got on scene. the recco detected the sled and the rider was only 20 feet down slope. had a transceiver been involved the riding partner would have been able to recover or rescue that day.
the la sals slide the rider had a transceiver in the off positing in a backpack. the dog found the victim 150' upslope from the sled. had a transceiver been worn and in the on position there might have been another outcome.
the gear is only part of the equation. it can fail and is subject to mechanical failure and peoples ability to use it correctly. a better option is, as stated by missy, to limit exposure. for those with high risk tolerance that may mean one on the slope at a time. to those of us that have seen a few bad things in life, that means avoiding the higher risks. for me, that means staying off and out from under slopes steeper than about 32 degrees when we have unstable faceted snowpacks. staying off 35-40 degree slopes when we have new snow instabilities on a given aspect is a good way to limit exposure with storm slabs in our intercontinental snowpack. we can play safe in even considerable and high danger by modifying our behaviors. the UAC does an excellent job of spelling it out for us. the problem is that some still don't get the message and of those that do, false negatives cloud our real time decision making. think about how many times we get away with riding a questionable slope. that modifies your behavior in the future and not for the better.
when your perception closely matches the reality of what is going on, most people make good decisions. the problem is that perception is quite subjective and at the whim of so many other variables that we don't always understand.
condolences to those that lost love ones and i hope that our snowpack will settle down for safe travel for those that recreate there.
