Opinions on beacons vary widely. These days, they're essentially all good -- provided you know how to use them. I have a
BCA Tracker DTS transceiver. It's easy to learn, relatively easy to use, and was on sale when we bought the pair.
This Pieps DSP beacon is more expensive and more complicated, but has much better range and more advanced features (like multiple burial screening). Still, you want to have a beacon you can use. Be honest with yourself -- if you aren't going to practice as much as you know you should, you may be better off getting a simpler beacon like we did. Note that beacons are one of the only pieces of outdoor gear I wouldn't buy used -- right up there with climbing rope or long underwear bottoms.
Practice doesn't make perfect, but it makes rescue possible. Beacons are not like the homing devices 007 uses. If you don't (1) learn how to search, and (2) practice, practice, practice, year after year, month after month, your objective probabilities of successful rescue go down. Fortunately, you can make practice fun. Put the second beacon in a plastic bag and hide it in a summer field, or bury it under disturbed snow in the backyard, or -- as we did two years ago -- hide Christmas presents with a beeping beacon and have someone else try to find them. It's fun for the whole family, and can help you save lives.
The rule I follow with beacons is "on at the car, off at the bar". No exceptions. Even if I'm planning a trip that will avoid avalanche terrain, the beacon comes with me (and turns on at the car) if there is any chance that our route may alter to include avalanche terrain (direct or runout). Likewise, I don't turn it off until we're all the way down. AA batteries are cheap; our lives are precious.
Beacons, shovels, and probes are the "holy trinity". Without any one of the three, actual rescue is made much more difficult. Know your equipment, and be able to assemble your probe immediately. (It's harder than you think. Imagine how hard it will be when your wife/friend/son is buried.) As with beacons, don't scrimp -- an extra $10 for a full-length (non-shovel-handle, non-"probe pole") probe will pay off if you ever need it.
So now you've shelled out the $300 minimum to buy all the gear, and maybe you've practiced using it. Great -- now you're unofficially certified to recover corpses and near-corpses. 30 minutes after the slide cuts, 50% of victims are dead. To me, it's clear that self-rescue needs to be secondary to risk minimization/avoidance.
How can you learn to avoid or minimize avalanche risk? How can you learn how to make good decisions that will prevent you from putting your beacon practice to use? Established avalanche safety courses
(Mount Washington Valley courses listed here, thanks to tuckerman.org) are a good start. Personally, I have not taken one, but many people have learned a lot from these courses. Course syllabi are generally standardized (Avy II should be the same throughout the country), but it's good to take a course in the area where you will be exposed to the risk -- NH snow is different from CO snow is different from PNW snow.
There's also
free online resources like this one from the Canadian Avalanche Association and good commercial books like Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain by Bruce Tremper
($12.21 at Amazon) and Snow Sense: A Guide to Evaluating Snow Avalanche Hazard by Fredston and Fesler
($8.95 at Amazon). Tremper's book is my personal favorite. Read it several times each year, go out into the field and apply what you read, and you're off to a good start. It's worth reiterating that just as with rope handling techniques, reading the book isn't worth much unless you practice application of what it says. Practice often.
You'll learn how snow is deposited, how snowpacks change, and how slides are triggered. You'll learn the effects of topography and weather. You'll learn useful heuristics that you can use to evaluate risk. You'll learn routefinding and snowpack analysis. You'll learn more red-light/yellow-light/green-light tests than you can remember at first. You'll put all these things to use, and you'll have a good time adventuring while minimizing the chances that you'll die.
Note that you should always consult the avalanche forecast (e.g.
Tuckerman Ravine's eastside forecast), but that sources like this are best used in conjunction with a deeper understanding of snow and weather processes and conditions.
Note too that merely eyeballing a slope can be misleading -- hidden hazards may exist. Is there depth hoar or a lubricated ice lens that you can't see from 500 vf below?
Note also that avalanche risk is one of many hazards that can be present in the mountains. Falls and exposure kill more people in our mountains than do avalanches. This does not minimize the importance of understanding avalanche risk; rather, I want to emphasize that you can't take your mind off any of the risk categories. As fishermen and sailors say, "Never turn your back on the sea."
By way of example, last Sunday Olivia and I
skied the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail, upper Monroe and the Lakes col. In a post by me (Todd G) toward the bottom of the page, you can see my notes on our avalanche risk analysis. Note that I am far from an expert, and I am still (always) learning a lot. For example, I misestimated slope steepness on that trip, fortunately without adverse effects.
Talk to people. Some know what they're doing, some are figuring it out, and some are clueless. (Actually, each of us is each of the three at all times.) Listen to what others have to say about conditions and risk, and evaluate for yourself whether it makes sense -- whether it's consistent with what you know.
Paul Petzoldt may have said it first: "There are old climbers and there are bold climbers, but there are no old, bold climbers." Get out there, have fun, go home, and come back again.
