Unassuming Heroes
The dogs who search for life after an avalanche

by Adam Tanous

An entire mountainside of snow gives way in an avalanche of raw and indiscriminate power. In an instant, the force of gravity is palpable.

A more subtle side of nature is revealed as a specially trained dog zigzags across the thousands of tons of snow debris and suddenly zeros in on the location of a person buried by the avalanche.

It’s easy to explain away the dog’s achievement as the result of training and the sensitivity of his nose—10,000 times more sensitive than a human’s. But the feat is nothing short of magical.

Whether by instinct, training or through some intersection of the two, dogs love to find things. They have been working with their human counterparts to find avalanche victims for more than 300 years. St. Bernards were first used by residents of St. Bernard’s Hospice, near the St. Gotthard Pass in Switzerland, to assist and rescue travelers crossing the rugged, snow-covered Alps.

Because dogs are so fast and efficient in their ability to find buried victims, ski patrol members and rescue workers across the United States invest a great deal of time training with canine partners.

The Wood River Valley, which surrounds the Sun Valley ski resort, has an active network of rescue dog handlers.

One local dog trainer who has been pivotal in gathering and disseminating knowledge about avalanche dogs is Sun Valley Police Chief Cam Daggett. 
Daggett loves dogs. He has been training and working with them for more than 30 years. Daggett started with sled dogs in the ’70s, then discovered search and rescue dogs in the early ’80s.

Daggett currently works with his Airedale, Cody, 5, for police tracking, as well as for the Galena Backcountry Ski Patrol and Blaine County Search and Rescue.
A trainer, says Daggett, works with his dog because “he loves the dog, is interested in the dog and it is a bonding experience for them.”

“If (in training your dog) you are trying to be a hero, you’ll get bored and quit,” Daggett says.

Early in the fall, he works with Cody three times a week and then once a week through the winter. Nearly a decade ago, that amount of training helped Daggett’s first dog, Roy, another Airedale, save a girl’s life by finding her where she lay bleeding in the woods.

Training an avalanche dog is an involved, seasonal process. It entails digging deep holes in the snow and getting help from others to set up training exercises. But it is time spent with the dog, Daggett emphasizes, that makes for a successful team of handler and dog.

Daggett often trains with two other local handlers, Mark Baumgardner, owner of Sun Valley Helicopter Ski Guides, and Kurt Eggers, a member of the Sun Valley Ski Patrol.

Baumgardner is training his first avalanche dog, a 3-year-old chow-aussie-shepherd mix, Otto, using the “five hole” training technique he is learning from Daggett. The first step involves the dog’s master running in plain view from his dog and hiding in an open hole in the snow. When the dog comes to the master, he is rewarded with a session of “play.” Some owners use a tennis ball game as reward; some play a quick game of tug of war with the dog.

The next step is to repeat the exercise, except this time the owner is covered with a few inches of snow. This exercise makes the dog realize people can be under the snow. For the third hole, the master and a stranger go in the hole with the master underneath. This way the dog has to go past the stranger to get to his master. The dog learns that people other than his master can be buried. Next, a stranger goes into the hole alone and is covered for the dog to find. For the fifth step, the dog is removed from the scene during the burying, then returned and instructed to search for the buried stranger.

Though described briefly here, this training process can take a couple of years. “Small steps are better,” Daggett emphasizes. 

“You always want the drill to be successful for the dog.”

Eggers, who trains with a 7-year-old Labrador-shepherd cross named Shelby, agrees.

“You should be able to read your dog. If she is having trouble with
the drill, you want to end on a good note.”

Some skills cannot be taught.

Having a good nose is important, and so is a dog’s personality. 

“Otto has an adequate nose, but, really, his best quality is he is motivated to play,” Baumgardner says.

That works for rescue because, as far as the dogs are concerned, searching for humans is a game of hide and seek.

Generally, a dog finds a victim through the human’s scents percolating up through air pockets in the snow. Once on the surface the scent moves with the wind. That is why, Eggers points out, “you want to work the dog downwind of the probable burial spot.”

It sounds simple, but many variables need to be considered in a rescue: wind direction and speed, air temperature, terrain features and probable depth of burial. Because of the complexity of conditions, Daggett points out, training the handler is as important as training the dog. The handler has to “interpret what the dog is doing and why,” says Daggett.

“I know my dog,” he says. “He may exhibit body language that I understand and someone else may not. It is important to put faith in your dog, not to out-think him, while at the same time seeing the big picture.”

Daggett recalled an exercise he conducted with fellow Galena Backcountry Ski Patrol member Bruce Smith and his veteran 9-year-old avalanche dog Avy. The dog picked up a scent and started digging at the tip of a barely exposed fallen tree. After a few moments, Smith realized the scent was actually traveling along the trunk of the buried tree where there was more air. He reasoned the victim was likely uphill, at the base of the tree—and he was.

In addition to variable terrain and weather conditions, handlers must condition their dogs to the chaotic nature of actual avalanche rescue scenes during these training exercises. At a real rescue site, often there are a number of people present, perhaps snowmobiles and snow cats running, scattered equipment and a general feeling of tension.

One of the challenges of finding a victim is to sift through the confusion and focus on the problem.

It is another situation in which interpreting a dog’s behavior is critical.

Daggett described an exercise he put Cody through last year as a way
of anticipating such a scenario. Three dozen clothing articles and three victims were buried in a large avalanche zone. Three teams (handler and dog) worked the zone simultaneously. When a dog picked up a scent, the handler had to immediately state whether the buried item was an article of clothing or a person. It was a determination Daggett had to make based on the intensity of Cody’s reaction.

The pressure of time is ever present.

A 1992 study of avalanche mortality indicated that 90 percent of buried people survive if recovered within 15 minutes. However, after 35 minutes the rate goes down to 30 percent, and after two hours it is down to three percent.

A major element to live recoveries is getting the dog to the scene.

On Jan. 5, 1996, at 2:45 p.m., an avalanche swept two teenaged boys down a slope near Galena Summit in the rugged Sawtooth National Recreation Area north of Sun Valley. After searching unsuccessfully for his friends, a third teen flagged down a passing motorist, who called for help.

Working ski patrol on Sun Valley Resort’s Bald Mountain that day, Eggers and Shelby were transported by helicopter to Galena Summit, about 26 miles of winding road from the ski mountain by car. They arrived at the scene at 3:56 p.m. Twenty-one minutes later Shelby found the first victim. A minute later the second victim was found. Both were dead. It is impossible to know whether the boys would have survived if the dog had been closer.

Avalanche dogs are also used to “clear” an area.

When the steep Lookout Bowl on Bald Mountain slid last winter, Shelby was on patrol with Eggers. Ironically, the ski patrol was conducting an avalanche class and demonstration for The Community School when the call came in. Although three patrolmen did rapid transceiver searches—electronic devices that locate victims wearing similar units—without detecting any signals, there was still a possibility that someone without a transceiver was buried. It wasn’t until Shelby had thoroughly worked the 1,000-foot avalanche path that the ski patrol was confident no one was buried.

It is hard to imagine a more terrifying feeling than that of the earth falling away beneath you. It is to feel control ripped from your life. While you might try swimming and fighting the torrent of snow moving as fast as 70 miles per hour, outliving the actual fall of an avalanche is probably a matter of luck. And when the slide finally stops and the snow cements you in its hold, the clock starts.

If a good, trained dog and handler can get to the scene in less than 15 minutes, they will likely find you before your time is up. Buried in the darkness, first there will be the sound of voices a world away, then the pacing above and finally the frantic pawing in the snow. When the light and air finally break through and life has been taken off hold, you will have two new friends: a dog and his handler.

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