Avalanche: Bull River Drainage, Denali National Park Corey Aist & Bean, Yellow Lab and Paul Brusseau & Chile, Aussie Alaska Search and Rescue Dogs On April 25, 1998, an avalanche just inside the boundaries of Denali National Park, west of Cantwell, had buried a snow machiner. Two ASARD dog teams (Corey Aist & Bean and Paul Brusseau & Chili) met up with three AMRG personnel and flew via Pavehawk helicopter to Cantwell. Due to the late arrival to the area and deteriorating weather conditions, teams were not flown to the avalanche site that evening but spent the night in Cantwell. In the morning of April 26th, teams were briefed by National Park Service personnel and flown to the site via high altitude Llama helicopter. The first dog team (Corey & Bean) went into the site and started searching the debris area, flagging two areas of interest within the first 15 minutes. One was in the primary search zone, and one was forty yards beyond the primary search zone as described by the witness already on site. The debris area was large (as the attached picture shows), deep and difficult to travel on. The second dog team (Paul & Chili) arrived on the next helicopter flight and also started searching the debris. Chili checked the lower flagged area digging and barking on the same location. Neither Corey nor Paul made a probe strike near the flagging, so the dog teams continued to search. About thirty minutes later, Bean indicated the location of the snow machine two feet below the surface, in the fall-line with the flagging outside the primary search area. This helped narrow the search area again. The additional personnel on site then formed a probe line starting at the snow machine working uphill. About 30 feet uphill from where the snow machine was located the subject was located by the probe-line. This was eight feet downhill from the flagging where the dogs first indicated. The subject was buried in seven feet of avalanche debris, and it took the searchers over two hours to dig him out. Lessons Learned 1. Scent will travel away from the subject following the easiest path through the snow debris to the surface. The dogs will at the location the scent reaches the surface. This may be away from the subject. This can be difficult because you may not be able to confirm your dog’s alert with a probe strike. 2. Two dog teams are vital to a successful recovery when the subject is buried deep. 3. Dogs do not dig down to the subjects in a real SAR as they do in training. A dogs alert is confirmed by a probe strike before people and resources are committed to digging. It takes too much time and energy to dig without confirmation. 4. We train for solid barking and digging alerts, but in the real scenario the dog’s alert can be subtle. The subject is deep and frozen. Read your dog carefully.  5. TRUST YOUR DOG and voice what your dog indicates to the on-site commander so appropriate actions and resources can be diverted to your find.

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