Continuous News

Avalanche "beacon park" opens in Bozeman

Posted: Jan 24, 2013 9:40 PM by MTN News

If you are looking to brush up on your back country safety skills and can't afford a class, the parks and recreation department and the avalanche center have teamed up for a great solution.

It's called a beacon park and it's located at Beall Park in downtown Bozeman.

Choppy, hard, snow is piled up to resemble the aftermath of an avalanche. Buried underneath all that snow are 3 avalanche beacons simulating a 3-person burial. You can activate all 3 beacons to make things really complicated or you can ease into with one.

"When you're doing this and you've got a buried person they literally only have 10 minutes to live so you have to be fact, the longest part is going to be to dig them out so you just have to be really efficient cause your partners life depends on it," said Jay Pappy, an educator with the Friends of the Gallatin Avalanche Center.

You do need your own beacon and a probe to test out the beacon park and while no digging is involved at the park, if you venture into the backcountry, you need at least a beacon, a shovel and a probe.

"Friends of the Avalanche Center installed a beacon training park at Beall Park with the idea of giving people the opportunity to practice their beacon rescue skills a lot of people think they know how to use their beacons but once practice with a little more pressure you'll see how good you aren't," said Pappy.