Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN AVALANCHE DOG
If all dogs go to heaven, ski patrol dogs get first dibs on the penthouse suites.
Any patrol dog sighting instantly makes a day on the mountain that much better. You could be fresh off the worst yard sale of the year, and it’d still put a huge smile on your face to see a vest-wearing pup climb onto a chairlift, ride on the back of a snowmobile, or sprint down a slope with their handler in tow.
But patrol dogs are more than just good PR for the resort. They’ve got years of training that prepares them to save lives—whether they’re needed within the resort or in the surrounding backcountry areas.
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
To learn more about what rescue dogs do and how they’re trained, we caught up with Craig Kuhnly and Chuck Gardner, the two lead dog handlers at
Powder Mountain Ski Resort in Eden, Utah. Their team has five actively working dogs, and one more in training—three Belgian Malinois, two yellow labs, and one mixed-breed dog.
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
As we meet, Powder Mountain is preparing to host a multi-day dog school in collaboration with
Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, a Utah-wide backcountry safety organization that works with resorts to test and certify avalanche rescue dogs. To simulate an avalanche site, the patrol team is digging a few dozen holes across a square-shaped area, about 100 yards on each side.
WBR certifies both ‘A’ dogs and ‘B’ dogs. As handlers and their dogs seek certification, they’ll be expected to find a certain number of “burial victims” within a 20-minute time frame—two for B dogs, and between one and three for A dogs. B dogs work exclusively within their home resort, while the more advanced A dogs can be called out for backcountry rescue operations.
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
Craig explains: “An A dog means we have enough confidence in this dog that if the local sheriff’s department calls, they can come by any means necessary—like picking them up in a helicopter. If we have an A team available, they’d fly that dog to the avalanche accident and start working to hopefully find somebody.”
While B dogs are working to become A dogs, all rescue dogs do important work within resort boundaries. Naturally, ski areas go to great lengths to minimize any inbounds avalanche risk, but snowpacks can be unpredictable, and being prepared for anything is the best policy.
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
“Snow Safety does their best to mitigate any hazards before opening terrain to the public, but sometimes a slide can still occur post-mitigation,” Chuck says. “
We can’t be certain anyone who’s out there is wearing an avalanche beacon, so that’s where the dog really comes into play as far as getting a quick find.”
Thanks to their powerful sense of smell, dogs can find people buried well beneath the surface of the snow. “They’ll get right on that person and be standing right above them,” Craig says. “You’ll verify that with a probe strike—just like in any avalanche search—and you get that person out of there.”
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
But before any dog gets their chance to save the day, they go through a rigorous screening and training process. “At Powder Mountain, we tend to look for a dog somewhere between 6 months and 2 years,” Chuck says. “We prefer to get dogs from rescues. Then we check the dog out and evaluate its drive—basically, ‘will it work?’ You can train obedience, but you can’t train drive.”
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
As far as how drive is evaluated, it usually involves a favorite toy. Chuck elaborates: “You don’t know this dog, the dog doesn’t know you, but you’ve got the dog’s favorite toy. You throw it somewhere the dog can’t see it—then see if the dog goes to look for it.”
If the prospective patrol dog instinctively searches for their toy with lots of enthusiasm, they’re off to a good start. But they’ve got to show more than that to prove they’ve got what it takes.
As Chuck explains, “Then we’ll take the toy and throw it where the dog can’t see it, and make the dog wait a little bit. We build this up in increments—15 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute, 5 minutes—to see if we can identify this drive.”
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
The most promising candidates will have such a strong instinct to find the toy that they stay fixated on finding it, even with other stuff going on around them.
“The dog knows the toy’s out there, but you’re not letting them get it,” Chuck continues. “But when you do let that dog go, we want to see the dog go and look for that toy. Whether or not they find it at this point is irrelevant. “
Craig sums it up: “We just don’t want them to quit or get distracted.”
Besides evaluating the dog’s drive, it’s also important to know if it’s physically healthy enough for a life spent running around in the mountains.
“Work is hard on dogs,” Craig says. “If we’re going to put all this time into a dog and we take it to the vet and it has bad hips, we might invest 2 years into a dog that’s only going to get to work 2 years. We like to get to an age of around 10 years old before a dog is done working.”
Once the resort’s handlers feel good about a dog’s chances to have a long and healthy career, the real training begins.
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
As Chuck explains, “We’ll start with what’s called a runaway. That’s when you have somebody take your dog’s favorite toy, shake it and shout real loud—and then run out of sight. Then you release your dog, the dog finds that person, and they get that big reward.”
For the Powder Mountain patrol dogs, the big reward is an intense play session. “We really like dogs that like to play tug-of-war,” Chuck says. “They get really into it, and it makes it a game for the dogs. Some handlers use a food reward—that works as well.”
After the dog learns to channel its drive toward finding people, their training continues with a series of exercises that build off one another.
“Eventually we’ll go on to things like putting a person inside what we call a bark barrel,” Chuck says. “At this point, the dog knows ‘I’m looking for a human scent that I cannot see.’ The dog will find the barrel, and they’ll indicate—some dogs bark, other dogs will scratch. From there, we start burying the barrels in the snow, and then finally we start burying people in holes.”
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
At every stage, the dog receives the same big reward with their favorite toy when they successfully find a person. It’s a long process, and not every candidate dog becomes certified. Craig estimates at least 30% of dogs wash out at some point. “You can put a dog through all these pre-tests and training. But even if everything looks good in the beginning, sometimes the dogs don’t achieve.”
Still, the effort is more than worth it when the dogs are able to help rescue somebody in danger. “This year we had a gal stuck in a tree well, and she was very difficult to find,” Craig recalls. “We deployed a dog for that situation, and the dog was on her right around the same time some other patrollers found her.”
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
When they’re not running drills or conducting searches, avalanche dogs also make great resort ambassadors. “We’ll put some goggles on them, have them sit on a snowmobile—people like to take pictures and pet the dogs,” Craig says.
But like any dog, they shouldn’t be petted without permission. “We don’t like people to ski up on the dogs because the ski and board edges are sharp and can cut them,” he continues. “And because they’ve got a lot of drive, they’re pretty high-strung. Always remember it’s a working dog. It’s the handler’s pet, but it’s not everybody’s pet.”
“They don’t necessarily like being surrounded, or people walking up on them real fast,” Chuck adds. “We spend a lot of time training our dogs not to have a bad reaction, but if the dog gets scared and is worried for its safety, it can react.”
While some caution is justified, most patrol dogs are still quite friendly. If you ask their handler nicely and approach with respect, there’s a good chance you might be able to meet one next time you see them out on the mountain.
Powder Mountain - Ian Matteson
As for how to support the Powder Mountain handlers and their pups, thank them next time you visit the resort, or buy a T-shirt—if you can find one.
“We do make and sell our own merchandise. Although we’re currently out because it’s in very high demand,” Chuck says with a laugh.
Follow Powder Mountain and Powder Mountain Patrol on Facebook and Instagram.
TJ Parsons is a semi-reformed snowboard bum who now has a semi-adult career as a professional writer and creative. He's a self-proclaimed perpetual intermediate who thinks the outdoors are for everyone, and who wants to help dismantle gatekeeping and elitism in outdoor sports. When he's not squeezing brain juice into a keyboard, you'll find him riding boards or bikes throughout the Intermountain West.
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