Chaffee County Avalanche Sue Purvis & Tasha Written by: Alan Wartes When Sue Purvis and her black Labrador Tasha arrived at the scene of an avalanche near Cottonwood Pass last Sunday, they were not there to perform a miraculous rescue. Wayne Wilkinson, a 42 year-old man from Manitou Springs, had been missing for five hours after being swept from his snowmobile by a quarter-mile wide, 400 yard long snow slide. He had no avalanche beacon. Tasha is a search and rescue dog with thousands of hours of rigorous training under her collar to prepare her for a task it would take humans perhaps hundreds of hours to accomplish. Tasha and Purvis were there to locate the body, the second time they had been called on to do so in four days. For Tasha, the job ahead is a kind of hide and seek game, one she has played hundreds of times now. Her nose and brain are thousands of times more capable of detecting and analyzing scents than her human counterparts. She responds eagerly to the command, "Go find." Purvis, a resident of Crested Butte for more than seven years, has a more difficult assignment. Her job is to take in the scene and decide where to place Tasha to maximize the chances of success. She assesses the wind speed and direction, any precipitation that has fallen, and the humidity of the air. She is stalking an invisible trail of skin cells that the human body - even those no longer living - constantly shed. "Humans give off around 50,000 cells every minute," said Purvis. "Two-thirds of these settle to the ground. The other third stays in the air. They carry our unique scent that is obvious to dogs." The relationship between a search and rescue dog and her handler is all important and takes years to perfect to meet strict certification standards. The pair must work as a team. "Dogs can find people without much problem, but what you have to do is to teach them to come back and tell you," said Purvis. "It's one thing when you can watch them, but what about when it is dark out, in a snowstorm. Your dog is running free and hits the scent and is gone." Tasha took the test to demonstrate this skill three times before passing. She found the "missing" person in three minutes, but wouldn't come back to get Purvis. Tasha was certified as an avalanche searcher in 18 months. Full wilderness certification took three years. Purvis and her husband, Dave Rowe, made a lifestyle change eight years ago. Both were geologists, traveling most of the time exploring for mineral deposits or for water. The couple decided to stay home for a change and settled in Crested Butte. Naturally, they bought a dog. Staying home, however, did not mean Purvis was prepared to "sit on the couch all day." She planned to remain active and expected her dog to do the same. Purvis briefly considered training Tasha as a hunting dog before it occurred to her that no one in the area was using dogs for search and rescue, in spite of the high risk of backcountry avalanche. From there she made contact with SARDOC - Search and Rescue Dogs of Colorado - and the long process of training began. Long, but not terribly painful. Lessons involved many hours outdoors exploring the backcountry, exactly what Purvis loves. Sooner or later, however, practice gives way to reality and dog handlers must face the grim nature of the work they do. "Going in you think, we're going to save lives," said Purvis. "But most of the time it doesn't work out that way. You train your dog and you want them to be successful, but usually by the time you get there it is a tragedy for somebody. Eighty percent of the time we are recovering someone who has died." Last Sunday, Purvis looked out over the chaotic aftermath of an avalanche. Somewhere in the field of huge slabs of ice and snow piled up more than 20 feet thick in places is the remains of a man who, just hours ago, was enjoying a day on a snowmobile. The wind was howling, gusting up to 40 miles per hour. Purvis and Tasha went to work on the part of the slide where the victim was last seen, and an hour later they had covered no more than an eighth of the surface area. The sun was going down and the temperatures were dropping. Just when the rescue crew was beginning to consider calling off the search for the day, Tasha took a break, going with Purvis' husband away from the slide. A few minutes later, as she returned, the dog dove into the snow no more than 30 feet onto the toe of the avalanche and started digging. This was the alert Purvis had been watching for. Search and rescue dogs sometimes save lives - like the 12 year-old hunter Tasha located in Gunnison County two years ago after the boy spent a cold night in the woods. Mostly what they save is thousands of hours of human labor. Their handlers work as volunteers, lucky if they get gas money after a "mission." What drives Purvis on is her passion for the work and her love of Tasha. She and her husband have already started thinking about a new puppy.

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