As others have said, this is probably the easiest to use and one of the fastest beacons made. In a burial, the last thing I want is to mess with some complicated contraption. The distance and directional readouts are awesome, as is the audible indicator- just so long as you understand the beacon and don't over-rely on these features. It seems to be pretty durable and has handled getting wet in the snow and from prespiration well. It is a bit bulky, but you can rig it so it rides comfortably under your jacket, even with skins and what not in there too. Bonus, it is also one of the cheapest beacons available.

The best skis I own. I bought these early spring and have put about 5 days on them. These skis have very durable construction- I thumped some logs and rocks and have virtually no marks to show for it. The topsheets get cut up a bit as usual, especially at the tips which are a bit thin, but nothing more than usual and better than most skis. I mounted these with Voile Switchbacks with my tele boot center about -1.5 cm from the alpine boot center line. This is definitely the sweet spot in powder, both for parallel and tele turns. The float on these skis is amazing. I have not tried any rockered skis yet, but I would imagine that the healthy tip and tail rise on these comes close, but the healthy traditional camber makes them suprisingly predictable and skier friendly on hard snow. They are very stable at speed. I let em run over some breakable crust and they were confident. They are quite responsive, with easy turn initiations and smooth turn exits and transitions. They will accept pretty much any turn you want them to make. I am 6 ft. 180 lbs and I think the 188 is a perfect length for me. If I only skied tight trees at resorts, I would get the 180, and if there were more open faces around here, I would get the 190. The 188 with Switchbacks is super light and is probably the ultimate tele touring setup right now. The trad camber is really springy which adds to the tourablity of these boards. I would highly recommend these skis. I currently own about 10 pairs of skis, and if I could only keep one pair (I live in Wyoming), I would keep the Rubys.