The person who built this also digs people out
AreYouBeeping is the product line of Hyak Consulting, LLC, an independent hardware and firmware shop at Snoqualmie Pass, Washington.
It is run by Erik Olson — a professional ski patroller and avalanche mitigation specialist who has also spent thirty years designing semiconductors. The DTS Transceiver Checker exists because both halves of that describe the same person.
15+ years
Winter SAR in avalanche terrain
50+
Search and rescue missions
30 years
Semiconductor design
2 papers
ISSW 2026
Background
- Professional ski patrol, including explosive avalanche mitigation
- Over fifteen years of winter search and rescue in avalanche terrain, with more than fifty missions
- Avalanche educator — teaches Avalanche 1 and Avalanche 2 courses
- Companion rescue instructor for professional patrol
- Published in The Avalanche Review and in the proceedings of the International Snow Science Workshop
- Degrees in engineering and computer science, and three decades of semiconductor design
Ski touring in the United States, Canada, South America, Switzerland, Italy, Norway, and France. Professional avalanche work in the United States.
Publications and research
Two papers on winter search and rescue decision-making, both to be presented at the International Snow Science Workshop 2026 on October 2, 2026:
- Winter Response Team
Erik Olson, Brad Hefta-Gaub, Jim Hirshfield — ISSW 2026
A rapid-activation winter response team can brief incident command with a GO, DELAY, or NO-GO recommendation before rescuers deploy into avalanche terrain. - Decision-making under Constraint
Brad Hefta-Gaub, Erik Olson, Jim Hirshfield — ISSW 2026
A decision framework for SAR teams, whose destination and timing are fixed by the mission rather than chosen the way a recreational party would choose them.
Also published in The Avalanche Review 43.1, on the Backcountry Radio Program — a shared-channel FRS radio system for the ski touring zones around Snoqualmie Pass, so that parties who do not know each other can trade hazard information and coordinate movement.
Research and publications are through SPART.
Legacy
The AreYouBeeping name is older than the current hardware. Earlier trailhead checker models were developed under previous ownership and documented at the International Snow Science Workshop. Those units are no longer produced, but the idea they tested — that an automatic beacon check at the point of entry is worth building — is the one this product continues.
- Are You Beeping? — Scott R. Waller, ISSW 2014
- Are You Beeping? — Scott R. Waller, Andy Hill, Dick Willy, ISSW 2012
Why this product exists
Teaching companion rescue to professional patrollers means running the same drill many times, and the drill keeps surfacing the same failures. A beacon switched off. A beacon still in a pack. Batteries that were fine last month. None of it is a knowledge problem — these are trained people, and they know better.
Forgetting is not fixed by more instruction. It is fixed by a check that happens whether or not anyone remembers to run one.
That is the entire idea behind the DTS Transceiver Checker: put the check at the gate, make it automatic, and catch the honest mistake at the one moment when correcting it costs nothing but a few seconds.
What that means for the product
The person who designed the circuit boards, wrote the firmware, and answers the support email is also the person who has carried a probe on a real search. That has consequences worth knowing about:
- Design decisions come from field use, not from a spec written by someone who has never stood at a trailhead in February.
- Support reaches the engineer. There is no tier to escalate through.
- Firmware keeps improving. Units update over the air from a browser, so fielded hardware benefits, not just the next production run.
- We repair what we build. Out-of-warranty units come back for service rather than going in a dumpster.
- Custom work is possible — unusual mounting, specific relay behavior, particular logging requirements. Ask.
Where we work
The Cascades carry a maritime snowpack — deep, dense, and warm compared with the interior ranges. Snoqualmie Pass sits at the wet end of it: heavy accumulation, frequent rain-on-snow, rime icing, and freeze-thaw cycles that cross freezing again and again through a season.
That is inconvenient for skiing and genuinely useful for testing electronics. Cold is the easy part. A sealed box handles cold. What kills outdoor hardware is water — driven rain finding a cable gland, condensation from repeated warming and cooling, ice loading on an enclosure, meltwater running down a post and into a connector. A unit that comes through a Cascade winter has been tested against the failure mode that actually ends equipment, not just against a temperature rating on a datasheet.
This is why the enclosure specification is not decoration. The IP66 / NEMA 4X rating and the sealed cable entry exist because the design was proven somewhere that punishes exactly those details.
There are DTS units installed and running at Snoqualmie Pass. The Pass carries heavy backcountry traffic within an hour of Seattle, so these are not demonstration installs — they see many parties, across a wide range of experience, all winter long. Problems surface here first, and they get fixed here first.
Ski touring elsewhere — the United States and Canada, South America, Switzerland, Italy, Norway, and France — informs how these are built. Professional avalanche work is in the United States. Equipment ships worldwide.
What this equipment is not
A transceiver checker confirms a transmitting beacon was detected. It does not verify that a beacon is fully functional, correctly worn, adequately powered, or that the person carrying it can run a search under pressure.
Anyone who has taught companion rescue knows the difference between having a beacon and being able to use one. This equipment addresses the first problem only. Training, current forecasts, terrain judgment, and a partner who can actually perform a rescue remain the things that matter most — and no product replaces them.
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