Rarely do you spend up to $300 on a piece of outdoor equipment you hope you’ll never use.

Unless it’s an avalanche beacon.

Beacons, also called avalanche transceivers, have been around since 1968. Recently, they’ve joined the digital age, becoming user friendly in an arena where minutes, even seconds, count.

”The technology in avalanche transceivers has improved more in the last five years than in recent decades,” said Charley Shimanski, executive director of the American Alpine Club and a volunteer with the Mountain Rescue Association. ”But avoiding avalanches is far more important than knowing how to survive them.”

A few sobering statistics bear that out. Of the 106 reported avalanche rescues involving beacons in recent years, only 39 people were recovered alive. Since 1985, 327 people have died in avalanches in the United States, five of them in Oregon last winter.

”(Avalanche beacons) are not a shield,” said Dale Atkins, the U.S. representative to the International Commission for Alpine Rescue and also an avalanche forecaster with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. ”Experience tells us that it’s generally a way to find a body rather than a living person.”

Still, an avalanche transceiver is better than nothing. Of all avalanche victims completely buried, only about 25 percent survive, Atkins said.

Of those killed, about a third die of trauma, most others of asphyxiation. About 2 percent die of hypothermia.

For those not killed by trauma, an avalanche beacon can save lives. For that reason, an avalanche transceiver along with a shovel and probe pole are considered standard gear for backcountry adventurers.

”It’s certainly the best tool that we have to be found fast enough to have a chance at survival,” said Atkins, who has been caught in avalanches twice himself.

The way an avalanche beacon works is that everyone in the group has an individual beacon set on transmit. Should an avalanche bury a member or members of the group, those who remain switch their beacons to receive to locate the buried beacon or beacons.

All beacons transmit and receive analog signals. Analog beacons convert that into an audible beep that increases in volume the nearer it is brought to the transmitting beacon.

Digital beacons covert the signal into a visual and audio display, providing visual clues with directional lights and a distance display on an LED or LCD screen.

Digital beacons include the Tracker DTS, Ortovox M1, Arva 9000 and Barryvox. These all cost about $300. Analog beacons are less expensive, about $260, and they include the Ortovox F1 and Pieps Optifinder, and others. Many analog beacons also employ lights to indicate signal strength.

Beacons transmit to a distance of about 100 meters, but the effective search range is about 20 or 30 meters, Atkins said. When switched to receive, digital beacons don’t have quite the range as an analog receiver because they must filter out more of the signal to convert it to digital.

”People find that the digital beacons are faster to do the search once they find the signal,” said Atkins. ”It may take longer to find the signal, but the search is faster once they get it.”

Avalanche transceivers do not send out a radio signal, but instead are electromagnetic induction devices that emit a pulse that creates a signal in the form of an electromagnetic field, Atkins noted. This field is in the shape of a butterfly, or, considered three dimensionally, like an apple core.

This causes some problems for searchers because the signal can suddenly disappear due to the directional relation of the receiving and sending beacons.

”Because of these issues of orientation, it’s possible to get closer and have your signal decrease or fade,” Atkins said. ”It’s the little quirks like this that, if you don’t practice, will come back and fool you in an actual rescue, resulting in a much longer than necessary search.”

That’s why avalanche beacons depend heavily on the skill of the searchers. Professionals who practice, such as ski patrollers, on average take 17 minutes to find a buried beacon, said Atkins. Recreational beacon searchers average 32 minutes.

That time difference is an eternity for someone running out of air under the snow. Atkins said records show that nine out of 10 completely buried victims uncovered within 15 minutes survive. Those numbers drop with each passing minute. At 30 minutes, only about 30 percent of buried victims survive.

”Pick your friends carefully,” Atkins said. ”If you’re with experienced, trained people, your chances increase quite a bit.”

There have also been advances on other fronts when it comes to surviving an avalanche.

The K2 Avalanche Ball is worn around the waist and deployed by pulling a rip cord that sends out a long cord attached to a mechanically inflated ball. This ball stays atop ”floats” on the moving avalanche. When it stops, other members of the group locate the cord by spotting the ball on the surface, and then follow the cord to the person caught in the avalanche.

Black Diamond has come out with a device called the Avalung, which is worn in the manner of a bandoleer.

”It actually works quite well,” said Atkins. ”It allows the buried person to breath under the snow. We know that even avalanche snow is mostly air.”

An Avalung wearer breathes through a mouthpiece that draws in oxygen from the snow. When the breath is exhaled, it is expelled behind the user, preventing the ”ice lens,” as Atkins calls it, that forms around a person’s face when exhaled breath melts nearby snow and creates a mass of ice that limits the oxygen and causes carbon dioxide to build up.

Tests on the Avalung, Atkins said, have lasted more than an hour and ended only because data showed the person testing the Avalung was breathing just as well as 30 minutes earlier.

But the real key to surviving avalanches, said Atkins and Shimanski, is to avoid them to begin with.

”If you use any of these things thinking it’s going to make you safer or more likely to survive an avalanche, you’re probably going to get killed,” Atkins said.

”In years like this, where we have a significant snow year, there’s a significant snowpack and an increase in avalanche hazards,” said Shimanski. ”The reality is, the majority of people trapped and buried under the snow will not survive the avalanche, no matter how many gizmos they have.”