Professional skier Nick McNutt was buried in an avalanche in March 2020. While he was under the snow, his Pieps DSP Pro beacon failed to emit a signal, making it impossible for the group searching for him to discover his location using their transceivers. It was only a random strike with an avalanche probe in the slide zone that found him. The incident led him and the skiers he was with that day to question whether the switch on the transceiver had unknowingly toggled between send and search modes a worst-case scenario that McNutt was fortunate to live through.
The athletes worked with Black Diamond (the distributor of the beacons in North America) and Austria-based Pieps to investigate the alleged problem. But in October, frustrated that the two brands hadn’t made a public statement addressing the potential issues in the seven months since the incident,
“I don’t have a signal either. Is his transceiver not on?”
“We need all hands on deck now!”
Their confidence was crushed. The most essential avalanche rescue tool, fundamental to their training scenarios, was suddenly useless. They’d have to find him using other means: pole-like probes and shovels. If they didn’t find him in 15 or 20 minutes, he likely wouldn’t survive. They were approaching the two-minute mark.
No way, McIntosh said to himself. This
can’t be how Nick McNutt dies.
They thrust their probes into the snow, guessing at which bit of debris he lay beneath. Lustenberger, the mountain guide, suggested they begin a probe line a methodical search of the whole avalanche area, top to bottom. “Now we’re relying on techniques used for body recovery, not rescue,” she says. McNutt, meanwhile, had no idea what was happening above. His snow tomb was soundproof. He realized he could pull in air through the porous snow, but only if he breathed slowly. So he
Concord Public Schools celebrated their new solar power source on Jan. 22 with a switch-flipping ceremony at the new 341-kilowatt sun array built by Entegrity of Little Rock.
Officials from Concord Public Schools in Arkansas, members of the community, and Entegrity hosted a flip the switch ceremony to celebrate the school’s new 341-kW solar array. The array, designed with a fixed tilt system, is located on 3 acres of school-owned land and will save the school over $17,000 a year in energy expenses by taking advantage of third-party financing and federal investment tax credits. The reduction in operating expenses will allow the district to reinvest back into the school’s budget and remain wise with taxpayer money.
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Concord’s local State Senator Missy Irvin voted in support of the 2019 Solar Access Act that enabled this project by allowing public entities to take advantage of low-cost solar energy with third-party ownership, net metering, and grandfathering. After the law went into effect, Concord Public Schools was one of the first school districts in the state to take advantage of it to reduce utility costs.
Arkansas Schools partner with Entegrity on solar project, use sheep to maintain fields
Cedar Ridge Schools and Midland School District teamed up to improve their districts with a new solar facility. The array, a 1.36-MWdc single-axis tracking system provided by Entegrity, was inaugurated during a “Flip the Switch” ceremony with students, staff, solar implementation team, policymakers, and the sheep that maintain the solar grounds.
Cedar Ridge Schools and Midland School District of Arkansas became the first districts in the state to utilize co-located solar energy technology after signing a solar services agreement with Entegrity. With this new option, the districts shared a common site and spread fixed costs, resulting in lower solar service rates for each school district. The project provides Midland School District and Cedar Ridge School District annual savings of approximately $46,000 and $65,000, respectively.