I’m up here in Vancouver, Canada covering what Arcteryx is calling their biggest product launch ever — by a factor of “five.” I’ll get into the clothing some other time, for now I’m blasting up a blog post just to get this out there for all you gearheads. They’re keeping us too busy, but I’ll update this post with more details and photos over the next 12 hours.

The Arcteryx Voltair (Volt Air) airbag backpack getting its first journalist demo.

The Voltair electric fan avalanche airbag backpack (available next winter of 2016/2017) comes in two sizes with “true volume, measuring what’s left AFTER the airbag guts are taken out of the equation.” Both the 20 liter and 30 liter versions appear to live up to that, as they’re quite commodious. They weigh 7.1 nd 7.6 pounds respectively. The fan system appears to work quite nicely, blowing the 150 liter balloon up to taut pressure in 5 seconds or a bit less. Standout features include a snappy leg loop system I very much like, and a mechanical triggering system (basic housed cable) that’s intuitive, with a handle that’s an easy grab and pull. The plumbing uses an impeller with a centrifugal blower, said to be difficult to engineer but able to provide excellent pressure as well as volume.

A rather large battery yields the juice for many Voltair inflations at normal winter temperatures, and insures at least a couple of puffs in arctic refrigeration. As always, we’d sure like to see a smaller battery — but they’ve got to keep it working up to standards. No worries, near as I can tell you could swap in a smaller 22.2 volt battery sourced from the RC race car hobby circuit. I feel my mod a growin’!

The marketing push for Voltair includes interesting (and valid) wrinkles. For example, they’re emphasizing that a percentage of avalanche deaths may be caused by people failing to deploy their airbags. Solution: As emergency personal do, any airbag user should do repetitive training for pulling the trigger, so they don’t freeze up in a real situation. You really can’t do that with a compressed gas system — it is simply to much hassle to keep recharging your tank. Electric, trivial. Just recharge and keep practicing until you pull the trigger subconsciously at the slightest hint of a slide.

I didn’t notice any immediate downsides to this version of the fan pack. Weight is a little higher than I expected (3465 gr, 7.6 lbs for the 30 liter). I’ve studied this issue quite a bit now. The weight problem resides in the batteries. Due to the need for high pressure inflation in 5 seconds or less, at temperatures down to negative 30 centigrade (these types of batteries are quite temperature sensitive), retail versions of these electric packs have to be sold with a massive lithium battery. I think the aftermarket can eventually step in on this and sell smaller swap-in batteries specified for a higher temperature range and fewer fills from one charge, but until then we’re stuck hauling around an 800 gram brick.

Aparantly, other battery technologies are available but nothing beats the basic 22.5 volt lithium polymer in terms of cost/reliability/capacity/weight. For example, a D-cell sized “thermal cell” exists that would inflate an airbag rucksack. Problem is it costs $700. The consensus on all this seems to be that first we simply need better batteries, and second we need more data about real life temperatures so we could avoid hauling around 500 or so grams of redundant power.

Interestingly, Arcteryx built “black box” data recording into the Voltair controller and battery electronics. With user permission they can downlink a full data set, including battery temperatures. Apparently they’ve been recording their test unit battery temps in the field, then comparing to ambient air temperatures, to ascertain exactly how cold the batteries become during different types of use (e.g., quick day trip vs overnight in a tent). One of the designers told me they’d indeed experimented with battery insulation and electric warming, but such tweaks added more weight than simply using a larger battery. He also told me that the battery does stay slightly warmer due to body heat, but only a by a few degrees and of course only if the pack is on your torso.