Strategies for recovering two or more people are buried in an avalanche

Rescue becomes more complex and more time consuming when there are multiple people buried by an avalanche. This is why one of the cardinal rules of backcountry travel is to expose only one person to an avalanche slope at a time. In the event of a multiple burial, you can maximize survival odds by allocating your group’s resources wisely. This may mean recovering victims concurrently if you have a large group of rescuers or focusing rescue efforts on a shallow burial versus a deep one. Although these situations aren’t as common, it is important to practice for multiple burial scenarios and understand how your avalanche transceiver performs under these circumstances. When there are multiple buried victims, a searching transceiver will usually lock onto the closest, strongest transmitting signal, drawing you toward that victim first. Most digital transceivers will indicate if they detect other signals.