Helicopters, crews dispatched to help find lost snowmobilers

Alaska

Three Alaska Army National Guard UH-60L Black Hawk helicopters and their crews helped rescue one of three snow-mobilers lost in an avalanche about 100 miles north of Anchorage Feb. 3.

A group of seven snow-mobilers triggered the cascading wall of snow on a slope south of the Eureka Roadhouse. They were traveling in a line up a 35-to-45-degree slope when the slide started, according to reports.

When the call from the Alaska State Troopers reached the Alaska Air National Guard/11 th Air Force' Rescue Coordination Center at Camp Denali on Fort Richardson, the response was swift. The Center directed the Alaska Army Guard to assist the Alaska Mountain Rescue Team in its search for the lost snow-mobilers.

The State Emergency Coordination Center at Camp Denali coordinated the rescue operation. By nightfall Feb. 3, one snow-mobiler had been pulled from the snow alive, a second was not as lucky and the third remained missing.

The Black Hawks ferried searchers, including specially trained dogs and their handlers, into the slide area at first light the next morning. The burgeoning avalanche area, which some searchers estimated to be more than a mile in length and up to 40-feet deep with hardened snow shards the size of cars, proved daunting to traverse.

Chili, one of the search dogs, was the first to locate the body of the third snow-mobiler who had been buried deep in the sea of snow. Searchers found his body 10 feet into the snowfield.

-By Maj. Mike Haller

Copyright National Guard Association of the United States Mar 2001
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