Guess what landed on the doorstep! A new Float 30 airbag backpack from BCA. I’ll be testing it out this year (just the backpack part, hopefully). A review will be coming once I can get out and backcountry ski with it. For now, here’s some pictures of some various parts of the pack.
BCA Float 30 airbag pack
Ultimate avy-survival setup for backcountry skiing, avalung and airbag (and beacon and helmet of course).
The Float 30 is loaded with tons of features, like this elastic mesh helmet carrier.
I hope I never have to pull on this in real life, but I'll do some tests and get it re-filled a few times just to makes sure the whole process works.
With the airbag components, and also the numerous zippers and pockets of the backpack itself, the Float 30 is noticeably heavy (7.4 pounds according to BCA website). Thus, I probably won’t be using it on any long days where weight is a factor. But for everything else, the extra margin of safety the Float 30 provides is well worth the weight. More, I might have to do a little work with the scissors and razor blade. Concern with this sort of mass is that one might leave essential backcountry skiing survival items behind to compensate, which would not be good. So it’ll be interesting to play around with how to utilize an airbag backpack and still keep it real with things such as first aid and survival gear — not to mention enough food and water. Stay tuned.
Start shopping for the BCA Float 30 pack.
Louie Dawson earned his Bachelor Degree in Industrial Design from Western Washington University in 2014. When he’s not skiing Mount Baker or somewhere equally as snowy, he’s thinking about new products to make ski mountaineering more fun and safe.
