An avalanche cord (German : Lawinenschnur) is an old form of person locating device designed to enable people who have been buried by an avalanche to be rapidly located and rescued.
An avalanche cord (German : Lawinenschnur) is an old form of person locating device designed to enable people who have been buried by an avalanche to be rapidly located and rescued.
An avalanche cord is 20-25 metres long and about 3.5 mm thick. It is usually made of red cotton with direction arrows positioned at metre intervals, each with the length marked in metres, and 10 cm long loops. It is wound into a ball. The ski mountaineer or climber ties the loop with the 1-metre mark (arrow against himself) around his waist. If there is a risk of avalanches he throws the ball out and pulls the avalanche cord along the snow behind him. If he is buried by an avalanche, there is a relatively good chance that part of the avalanche cord will be visible on top of the avalanche slide, thanks to its length. Rescuers can determine from the direction arrows, in which direction and how many metres they must dig and are then able to follow the cord to the victim.
The avalanche cord was part of the personal mountaineering equipment of the Austro-Hungarian Alpine companies in the First World War. They were prescribed around 1915 for the Austrian mountain troops in the war in the mountains. Thanks to more recent developments such as avalanche transceivers the classic avalanche cord is rarely used today. The functional principle of the avalanche cord continues to be used and developed, however, in the avalanche ball.
Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in Scotland, the United Kingdom, and the British Isles. The summit is 1,345 metres (4,413 ft) above sea level and is the highest land in any direction for 739 kilometres. Ben Nevis stands at the western end of the Grampian Mountains in the Highland region of Lochaber, close to the town of Fort William.
A sling is a projectile weapon typically used to hand-throw a blunt projectile such as a stone, clay, or lead "sling-bullet". It is also known as the shepherd's sling or slingshot. Someone who specializes in using slings is called a slinger.
An arrow is a fin-stabilized projectile launched by a bow. A typical arrow usually consists of a long, stiff, straight shaft with a weighty arrowhead attached to the front end, multiple fin-like stabilizers called fletchings mounted near the rear, and a slot at the rear end called a nock for engaging the bowstring. A container or bag carrying additional arrows for convenient reloading is called a quiver.
An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a slope, such as a hill or mountain.
An ice axe is a multi-purpose hiking and climbing tool used by mountaineers in both the ascent and descent of routes that involve snow, ice, or frozen conditions. Its use depends on the terrain: in its simplest role it is used like a walking stick, with the mountaineer holding the head in the center of their uphill hand.
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The Salang Tunnel is a 2.67-kilometre-long (1.66 mi) tunnel located at the Salang Pass in northern Parwan Province of Afghanistan, about 90 km (56 mi) north of the nation's capital, Kabul. At nearly 3,200 m (10,500 ft) above sea level, the tunnel work was originally completed by the Soviet Union in 1964.
A Prusik is a friction hitch or knot used to attach a loop of cord around a rope, applied in climbing, canyoneering, mountaineering, caving, rope rescue, ziplining, and by arborists. The term Prusik is a name for both the loops of cord used to tie the hitch and the hitch itself, and the verb is "to prusik" or "prusiking". More casually, the term is used for any friction hitch or device that can grab a rope. Due to the pronunciation, the word is often misspelled Prussik, Prussick, or Prussic.
In knitting, casting on is a family of techniques for adding new stitches that do not depend on earlier stitches, i.e., having an independent lower edge. In principle, it is the opposite of binding off, but the techniques involved are generally unrelated.
A neck knife is a knife worn on a cord hanging from a person's neck. It usually means a small fixed-blade knife which is carried by means of a cord, by which the knife sheath is suspended from around one's neck. They can either hang handle up or handle down. The knife may be hung from a loop of natural or synthetic cord, a length of braided paracord, a leather thong, or even a breakaway beaded or ball chain such as those utilized for military dog tags.
An ice screw is a threaded tubular screw used as a running belay or anchor by climbers on steep ice surface such as steep waterfall ice or alpine ice during ice climbing or crevasse rescue, to hold the climber in the event of a fall, and at belays as anchor points.
A bowstring joins the two ends of the bow stave and launches the arrow. Desirable properties include light weight, strength, resistance to abrasion, and resistance to water. Mass has most effect at the center of the string; one gram (0.035 oz) of extra mass in the middle of the string slows the arrow about as much as 3.5 grams (0.12 oz) at the ends.
An avalanche transceiver or avalanche beacon is a type of emergency locator beacon, a radio transceiver operating at 457 kHz for the purpose of finding people buried under snow. They are widely carried by skiers, particularly back country skiers for use in case a skier is buried by an avalanche. Before setting out on an expedition, all the members of a group activate their transceivers in the transmit mode, causing the device to emit low-power pulsed radio signals during the trip. Following an avalanche, if some members of the ski party are buried, the others may switch their transceivers from transmit into receive mode, allowing use as a radio direction finding device to search for signals coming from the lost skiers. The avalanche beacon is an active device powered by batteries; a ski suit may also contain a passive RECCO transponder sewn into the clothing.
State Highway 94 is a New Zealand state highway connecting the large Southland town of Gore with one of New Zealand's most popular destinations, Milford Sound. It also passes the significant townships of Lumsden and Te Anau as well going through the Homer Tunnel. The road also goes through Fiordland and crosses the Main Divide of the Southern Alps.
Avalanche rescue involves locating and retrieving people who have been buried in avalanches.
In archery, a release aid, mechanical release, or release is a device that helps to fire arrows more precisely, by using a trigger to release the bowstring, rather than the archer's fingers. It is used to make the release of the bowstring quicker and reducing the amount of torque put onto the bowstring from the archer's fingers.
On 7 April 2012, an avalanche hit a Pakistan Army base in Gayari Sector, near the Siachen Glacier region, trapping 140 soldiers and civilian contractors under deep snow. The incident occurred at an altitude of about 4,000 meters and 300 km northeast of Skardu. It was the worst avalanche that the Pakistani military has experienced in the area.
String is a long flexible structure made from fibers twisted together into a single strand, or from multiple such strands which are in turn twisted together. String is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects. It is also used as a material to make things, such as textiles, and in arts and crafts. String is a simple tool, and its use by humans is known to have been developed tens of thousands of years ago. In Mesoamerica, for example, string was invented some 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, and was made by twisting plant fibers together. String may also be a component in other tools, and in devices as diverse as weapons, musical instruments, and toys.
On the afternoon of 18 January 2017, a major avalanche occurred on Gran Sasso d'Italia massif, one of the mountains above Rigopiano, impacting and destroying the four-star Hotel Rigopiano in Farindola, Abruzzo. The impact killed twenty-nine people and injured eleven others, making the avalanche the deadliest in Italy since the White Friday avalanches in 1916, and the deadliest avalanche in Europe since the Galtür avalanche in 1999.