The winter backcountry boom of the past few decades has resulted in a corresponding golden age of new snow safety products, including avalanche transceivers with improved search capabilities, inflatable airbags, and even state of the art communications systems to help multiple users coordinate their wild mountain travel.
All of this has helped significantly raise awareness about the importance of training with safety equipment and working with your off-piste companions to maintain a shared sense of out of bounds protocol.
People are still triggering slides, often with serious consequences, but also with a greater chance of survival.
That is what makes the recent news out of Bolzano, Italy from avalanche safety gear brand Safeback so remarkable. Based on the results of a clinical trial of its SBX avalanche survival system, which have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), people using the system can dramatically increase their rescue window after burial.
Game Changer
The study, led by Eurac Research’s Institute for Mountain Emergency Medicine, demonstrated that the SBX system can increase survival time fivefold for individuals buried in an avalanche.
Granted, this is contingent on slide victims not being “mechanically destroyed,” as the avy parlance goes, due to significant trauma. Asphyxiation is the main cause of avalanche deaths, which the SBX system is built to mitigate.
According to Safeback, the “SBX is a patented, battery-powered air pump system that leverages the natural porosity of snow to circulate fresh, breathable air from the snowpack behind a buried victim’s back to their face via the backpack’s shoulder straps. This continuous airflow delays asphyxia, even in the absence of an air pocket, as demonstrated in the recent study.”
“Safeback was founded with a goal-zero vision: a world without avalanche fatalities,” said Tor Berge, Safeback’s CEO and Co-founder. “By supplying burial victims with a continuous supply of fresh air, SBX helps buried victims stay alive longer, giving rescuers more time to reach them.”
“We know survival depends on more than one tool,” Berge said. “That’s why SBX stands alongside continued education, advanced prevention methods, and cutting-edge rescue technologies.”
The Study
Conducted in 2023 with complete independence from Safeback, the study involved 24 volunteers who were buried face-down under 50 cm of avalanche-density snow, which in itself sounds pretty scary.
Participants were randomly assigned to either a control group, using placebo SBX devices, or an SBX group, equipped with functioning SBX devices.
Key Findings from the JAMA-Published Study report that in the control group, four of 12 volunteers requested the experiment be stopped due to distress, and seven had their burials terminated after a median of 6.4 minutes due to oxygen saturation falling below 80 percent, as required by protocol.
In the SBX group, no participant buried with a functioning SBX device had their experiment stopped due to low oxygen saturation. Their median burial time was 35 minutes, reaching the maximum duration planned for the experiment.
Researchers noted, “In a real-life situation, emergency services or the victim’s companions would likely have had more than five times as much time to respond (with SBX), and potential cardiac arrest would occur much later.”
Read the JAMA study results here.
The Gear
Designed for simplicity and reliability, the lightweight SBX unit (520g) features only three moving parts, occupying approximately 0.75L in a compatible backpack’s main compartment.
Activated by a T-shaped handle, similar to avalanche airbags, SBX operates for 90 minutes at -22°F / -30°C using readily available Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA batteries.
SBX is integrated into avalanche backpacks developed by leading outdoor brands. For the clinical trial, volunteers wore the Snow Pro Vest 8L from Db.
Currently, SBX-equipped backpacks are available from Db, Raide Research, and Bergans of Norway through specialty retailers. In February 2023, Safeback was granted a US Patent for the SBX Avalanche Survival System.