*** Avalanche Safety Vest ***

From: ccrowley@aol.com (Ccrowley)
Reply-To: ccrowley@aol.com (Ccrowley)
Newsgroups: rec.skiing.backcountry
Subject: Re: Avalance Safety Vest
Date: 10 Apr 1996 22:12:11 -0400
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)

Rasmussen@Bioscience.utah.edu (Randy Rasmussen) Wrote:
The following appeared in the Patents column of the 4/1/96 NYT.

If it works it would have saved at least one of the fatalities in SLC this
year. A ski patroler at Solitude was caught in an avalanche set off by a
hand charge. He was found in about 30 minutes, buried with his head just
under the snow surface but died of suffocation.

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It WOULD have saved his life! I've seen it work.
Actually, Thomas Crowley is my dad...

During the developement of the "AvaLung" (tm) we BURIED him in a nice snow
grave about 3feet x 7feet x 7feet deep. I STAMPED & SMASHED the snow
down onto him as hard as I could with each shovelfull. He had an
extremely small microphone inside the mouthpiece of the Avalung and about
every 15 seconds would kinda grunt so that we know he was alert.
He stayed in for 45 minutes  (VERY few avalanche victims live that long....
I think the literature lists only 4 or 5 cases in the US). He finally got
too scared and we had to dig him out. He had nightmares forweeks.

The video is pretty impressive. The device works darn well, and he takes it
with him on every backcountry trip. He is working on selling it, but I
shouldn't say more than that.

Chris Crowley  Many    : )

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