Baker Beacon Rally

The Baker Beacon Rally is a very cool event that is put on by a combination of the REI, the American Alpine Institute, and a number of other organizations in early January. The event planners are looking for some volunteers to help with a combination of instruction and monitoring a beacon race.  Please see information below:

REI is seeking a few additional Beacon instructors and a few race course volunteers for the Baker Beacon Rally on January 6th.  Beacon instructors need an AIARE level 1 or Canadian equivalent; more importantly they need to be comfortable showing signal search, course search, fine search, pinpoint and probe technique.  No shoveling technique is presented with the Beacon instructors; Steve Christie will have a diorama and a revolving 15 minute talk on strategic shoveling. 

Race Course volunteers just need to be ok with being outdoors and have some energy and enthusiasm.  Their responsibilities are to monitor the course listening for probe strikes on buried wood boards then giving the ok to proceed.  They will also be the ones disqualifying people if they are caught from behind. 

The race will be 160 meters long, groomed, with two lanes side by side.  Two stop points in which you search for a buried beacon, once a probe strike is attained they move on to the second set of buried beacons.  First person to cross the finish gets 5 raffle tickets, second gets only one ticket.  A separate raffle will take place for the race.  Oh yeah, every two minutes another set of people start on the course.  If you are caught from behind you are disqualified; pressure is on from the person you are racing next to and from behind.  If you are DQ’d you can get back in line and race again. 

If you are interested in volunteering at the event, please email Jason Martin at jason(at)alpineinstitute.com.

For those of you who would like to attend the event, please see event details below:

--Jason D. Martin