Beacon Clinic

Director
Feb 3, 2018
1 min read

Over 40 ladies were keen to learn and refresh their beacon skills, even on a Monday morning! It was a gorgeous day up at Alta. Our fearless lady leaders discussed some beacon basics, including the flux lines (shown above) of a beacon.

After the full group discussion the ladies broke up into groups of about 6 to head outside to have some practice. Some groups started by going through good items to have in your pack for a tour and some were eager to get outside to enjoy the beautiful day.

Once outside, the leaders demonstrated the 3 phases of the beacon search which can be simplified to Run, Walk, Crawl. These refer to the steps of finding a beacon signal (run), following the flux lines (walk), and doing the fine search (crawl).

After the demo, it was time to practice! A beacon was hidden and the group searched, probed for and dug it out. There’s no such thing as too much beacon practice so the groups kept at it until we ran out of time.

Thank you instructors, the Utah Avalanche Center, and Alta Community Enrichment for helping make this clinic a reality!