TRANSCEIVER BASICS: SEND, SEARCH, TRUST
9 min · Free lesson · written lesson, video in production
After this lesson you know what an avalanche transceiver does, why it lives on your body in send mode from carpark to carpark, and how the search sequence works - signal, coarse, fine, pinpoint - so the beach drill in the next lesson makes you genuinely fast.
The Technique
- A transceiver is a radio beacon with two jobs: send, which it does all day strapped to your chest, and search, which you switch to only when someone is under the snow. It is one third of the non-negotiable trio - transceiver, probe, shovel - and any one without the others is a promise you cannot keep.
- It lives on your body, under your outer layer, never in the pack. Packs get torn off in avalanches; the beacon that could find you rides in the debris a hundred metres from where you stopped.
- The buddy check is a ritual, not a suggestion: at the trailhead every rider proves send, then one by one proves search, every single day. Groups that skip it on day forty are the statistic.
- The search sequence has four phases and each has its own pace. Signal search: move fast in wide lines across the debris until the unit first speaks. Coarse search: follow the direction and falling distance numbers in fast arcs - the flux line curves, so trust the arrows, not your instinct to run straight.
- Fine search: from about five metres, slow right down, beacon on the snow surface, grid pattern - forward, back, left, right - chasing the lowest number. The lowest number is your mark.
- Pinpoint is the probe's job, spiral pattern from the mark, and digging is where minutes actually go - dig from downhill, wide, and move snow once, not twice. Searching is a team sport: one directs, others probe and dig.
- Statistics are blunt: survival odds fall steeply after the first minutes under snow. The rescue that saves your mate is the one your own group performs - help from outside arrives for recovery, not rescue. That is why the next lesson exists.
Common Mistakes
Practising search but never practising the switch. Fix: drill going from riding to search mode with gloves on - fumbling the mode switch costs the fattest minutes of the clock.
- Following the arrow like a compass bearing. Fix: the signal curves along the flux line - expect the arc, keep moving, let the numbers fall.
The Drill
The living-room flux walk: one transceiver in send under a cushion, search from across the house. Feel how the arrows curve you in, watch the numbers, finish with a fine-search grid on the floor. Ten minutes, once a week, before the beach drill.
A transceiver changes nothing about the snowpack. It is a rescue tool, not a permission slip - terrain choice, conditions and formal avalanche training decide whether you ever need it. Book an avalanche skills course for the country you ride in; ours run with the best in the world. This content is general guidance, not medical advice.
LET'S BUILD
YOUR
ADVENTURE
Whether you want to surf Japan's legendary powder, ride the Old Telegraph Track to the tip of Cape York, or chase a New Zealand winter - tell us what you're dreaming about and we'll build the trip around you.