Consumer Product Safety Commission recalls ten-foot poles that you couldn’t touch a person with

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You probably have heard the idiom that:

 

“I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole.”

 

On February 16, 2023 the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has an article about a product recall titled KLIM recalls backcountry probes due to risk of severe injury or death. These KLIM A300 folding probes are 118” long (almost ten feet). They consist of seven ~17” sections that are supposed to be assembled to form a rigid pole which can be pushed into the snow (as shown above) to locate (touch) someone buried by an avalanche.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The probe design is similar to, but much taller than that for a folding cane used by blind persons, as shown above. Reportedly the probes can fail to operate properly when deployed by rescuers.

 

Images of avalanche probing and a folding cane came from Wikimedia Commons.