In reply to Ronbo:
> A reasonable mitigation when approaching a route (which is often the highest risk area while climbing) is to tie into one end of the rope and drag it
That sounds just as "effective" as avalanche cords - that is not at all. Was there ever a documented case of successful rescue only by avy cord? Don't think so. The Avalanche Review even mentions several cases where the cord only worsened the situation by tightly winding around the victim's body.
"Being wrapped up by an avalanche cord certainly can cause problems. A bunch of years ago a ski patrol friend was buried while wearing his cord. He and his cord both ended up completely buried. Though buried less than a foot down, he could not self-extricate because his cord had spooled around him, binding his arms and hands to his body."
"In their 1986 book, The Avalanche Book, Knox Williams and Betsy Armstrong cite an early 1970s study where avalanche cords were tested on sandbag dummies. The dummies were placed onto steep slopes where explosives were used to trigger avalanches. Trials showed a portion of the cord remained on the surface only 40% of the time. The other 60% of the time the cord was completely buried along with the dummy. I was told years ago that in most of those buried cases the cords were spooled around the dummies."
[TAR 27.3, page 26 - https://www.americanavalancheassociation.org/s/TAR2703_LoRes.pdf ]
Even if you got lucky and some part of the rope remained on the surface, you could be just anywhere up to 60m from it. At least avy cord had distance and direction markers. Second, the cord used was much thinner, so the rescuers could (theoretically) tug & cut through the debris with it until above the victim. Who knows if that would even work with your typical thicker dynamic rope?
Post edited at 13:06