A group of students at Oregon State University Cascades has invented a device that could help save skiers and snowboarders trapped in tree wells, the Central Oregon Daily News reported.
The device, called the Tree Well Guardian, started as a class project in outdoor product design. It attaches to a skier’s boot and, when it’s inverted—meaning a skier is stuck head-first in a tree well—it begins sending out a GPS alert. The device also includes a ten-second warning period to avoid false alarms.
“The idea first kind of came about when Makani [Hiltner] and I were having a conversation about some of the recent deaths that had taken place up at Mount Bachelor that were tree-related,” Hunter Erhard, one of the students, told the Central Oregon Daily News.
The Tree Well Guardian went on to win second place at Invent Oregon, a collegiate prototyping challenge, earning the student designers $7,500. The team now plans to keep working on the device, doing “product discovery” and “product viability” testing.
Tree wells present a distinct suffocation risk to skiers, particularly during and after storm days when the snow piles up.These voids beneath the snow surface can reach as deep as 20 feet. According to deepsnowsafety.org, 90% of people in tree well and deep snow immersion research experiments could not escape on their own, meaning outside help is often critical.
It makes sense, then, that beyond the Tree Well Guardian, other inventors are working to develop GPS technology that can notify rescuers if a skier is stuck in the snow or has been hit by an avalanche.
Got-U, which has been tested by ski patrollers at Palisades Tahoe, California, as well as other resorts, relies on a cell phone’s inertial sensors to detect if a skier is in a tough spot. If they are, the program sends loud, flashing alerts to a control center along with the skier’s location.
Central Oregon Daily News
In a miraculous event last winter, Apple’s Find My Friends feature also contributed to the rescue of a skier trapped by an avalanche for four hours at Stevens Pass, Washington.
While avalanche beacons remain the backbone of the snow rescue toolkit, GPS-equipped programs and devices appear to be the next frontier of mountain safety, particularly inside the boundaries of ski resorts where skiers are much less likely to be carrying avalanche equipment.
Related: Andrzej Bargiel Conquers Ski Descent of “Killer Mountain” Without Oxygen
