Ah, the humble avalanche shovel. Probably the most boring, least interesting piece of gear involved in ski mountaineering. Virtually everyone carries one, but does anyone ever think about these tools? I think most people buy one, toss it in their backpack because it’s required avalanche rescue equipment, and forget about it for the most part. Today is as good a time as any to re-evaluate that single piece of gear.
A good shovel design - the shaft is kept inside the blade sleeve, eliminating fumbling.
Efficiently cruising about in the mountains on skis involves more than simply utilizing the lightest gear. Light gear is important, but perhaps more so is the design of that gear.
Avalanche shovels offer up a multi-functionality almost on par with the Whippet ski pole. They’re used in digging snow pits for snowpack analysis. For digging through avalanche debris on the occasion that you’ve got to rescue a buried victim. For digging a snow cave when other options for shelter have become less viable. They’re often used to hold a stove off the snow – keeping it from melting into a puddle while cooking – at least by those who haven’t fabricated a dedicated stove board. Shovels materialize when a stuck vehicle needs to be dug out of the trailhead, or even when the overnight snows haven’t yet been plowed, and an impromptu parking space needs to be hewn. In short, shovels serve many purposes and are employed in many ways by wintertime backcountry users.
When looking at shovels, the usual considerations revolve around the size of the blade (will it fit in my pack?), weight of the entire package, and cost. Avalanche oriented backcountry shovels come in a range of sizes, but most are right in the zone that’s suitable for snow column tapping, ECT’s, and the like. Most fall into a similar price range, most are comprised of metal. Anyone who shows up with a plastic shovel in their pack clearly doesn’t have it in mind that they’re going to be involved in a live avalanche rescue. Plastic shovels bend and are near useless at digging through avalanche debris that has set up.
Because avalanche shovels are meant to be carted around, either on, or inside skier’s backpacks, the most common feature is a detachable handle. Depress a tiny button or two, pull the handle, and it comes free of the blade for easy storage on, or inside, the backpack. Here is where avalanche shovel dynamics come into play. Not all shovels are designed equally.
To reassemble a shovel, one usually inserts the shaft into the blade (squeezing the buttons simultaneously to allow this motion), lines up the buttons with the holes in the blade, and snaps the package into one piece. The problem ensues if one has a round shovel handle. Lining up those buttons to match up with the pre-drilled holes can be an elusive process. It’s not easy to determine where the buttons are when they’re inside the blade’s shaft.
Consider that if a friend is buried, you don’t want to waste time using fine motor skills in your adrenaline fueled state. Further, once the handle is attached, many shovel designs then require another set of buttons to be pressed to extend the handle. Here too, as the handle is extended, the holes must line up properly. This whole process is a mess.
The genius of shovel design is to offer a rectangular, oval, or otherwise shaped handle. Simply slide the pieces together, and the holes line up without thought or time-suck. It’s nothing short of magical when you’re trying to get a shovel ready to dig in a hurry.
Oval or rectangular shovel shafts are the way to go. Round is out.
Taking speedy shovel dynamics a step further, the best setup is to carry a shovel whose handle simply slides into the blade when not in use. With one single motion – pulling on the handle – the shovel is ready to be employed. This is an incredibly fast process. This in mind, carrying a shovel handle separately from the shovel blade makes no sense to me.
I never specifically timed my shovel assembly. However, retrieving the separate handle and blade from my pack, squeezing the buttons to insert the handle, then lining up the buttons, then depressing the other set of buttons to lengthen the handle, and lining that up so the buttons popped into place in the extender holes all took a long time. I’d estimate it took anywhere from 40-60 seconds. Yes, that’s a sober assembly time.
Throw in a little mad pow disease, a racing heartrate, heavy breathing, adrenaline blurred vision (your friend is buried, this is not a placid moment), thick gloves covered in slippery snow, a stiff mountain breeze, snow falling, and flat light to obscure the visibility of the entire hole-lineup operation. All these common obstacles increase the time it takes to assemble your shovel pieces. It’s easy to drop one of the two parts during this process too; slippery gloves on a slippery painted shovel begs for a mishap.
That’s nonsense. If you’re in an avalanche rescue scenario, every second counts. The problem is easy to see. It’s also relatively easy to address, by following the next two points:
- Only consider shovels which include a shaped (oval, rectangular) shaft. Round would work if there is a guide groove down the length of the shaft, but I haven’t seen that offered up.
- Preferably, find a shovel which allows the shaft to be stored inside the blade.
I modified a backcountry access shovel to eliminate the extendable handle. It’s now a one length shovel – permanently longer than the shortest position, and shorter than the fully extended position. (Other companies, as well as BCA, do make single length shovel shafts. By default, this is the ‘fastest’ design.) Better than that though, the shaft resides inside the shovel blade and doesn’t take up very much space inside a backpack. And, saving the best for last, it’s virtually instantaneous. Once the shovel is in my hands, it takes less than a second to pull the handle into place. Presto, the avalanche shovel is ready to dig.
Ready to 'assemble' the avalanche shovel.
After about .4 seconds of assembly, the shovel is extended and ready to dig. Piecing together a blade and shaft takes aeons more time.
While I wouldn’t wish a real avalanche rescue scenario on anyone, we can all agree that the primary use of backcountry shovels is to do more innocuous grunt work such as digging pits or parking spaces. Being more efficient in the mountains means looking at every aspect of your day. It just makes sense to trim time by carrying the right tools. Take a look at your boring, humble shovel. It’s with you on almost any backcountry outing. Is it everything that it should be? Is it as fast as it could be? Can you save a minute on either end of every instance of shovel use? Do you want your pal wasting time assembling a shovel when you’re buried?
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