STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

The sun was still making its way over the Pioneer Mountains as a couple dozen ski patrollers gathered on the River Run Plaza, their German shepherds, border collies and golden and labrador retrievers at their side.

As skiers began lining up, eager to make turns on Sun Valley’s corduroy, the patrollers and their dogs began boarding the gondola for a trip to the Christmas lift that would ferry them to the top of Bald Mountain.

There, the dogs and their human companions would have a full day ahead of them in what would resemble playtime for the dogs and life-and death scenarios for their human handlers.

Ben Butler and Uma board the gondola.

Twenty-four teams of ski patrollers and Search and Rescue workers and their dogs came to Sun Valley recently to take part in a three-day course provided by Colorado Rapid Avalanche Deployment or C-RAD, a nonprofit organization that had its genesis in a 1987 avalanche near Breckinridge, Colo., that buried eight and killed four.

The search and rescue operation took three days and hundreds of rescue professionals and volunteers probing into feet of avalanche debris. And it pinpointed the value of avalanche dogs.

This was the first time Sun Valley Resort has hosted a training/certification course, said Sun Valley Ski Patroller Sarah Linville, and patrollers came from Grand Targhee, Breckinridge, Beaver Creek, Deer Creek, Tahoe and other resorts.

“We even had a team from Alyeska, Alaska, come down for this,” she said. “I’ve been to such trainings at Grand Targhee, the Yellowstone Club, Jackson Hole and Colorado. It’s a great opportunity to learn from multiple handlers from all over the West.”

A dog pulls a ski patroller out of a snow cave.

Among those taking part in Sun Valley’s certification course were Search and Rescue volunteers Ben and Sarah Butler, who came from Summit County, Colo., with their five-year-old black lab Hogle and 2-year-old white lab Uma.

Hogle is like a bull in a China closet, jumping through water and over boulders to find the object of his search.

“He’s like driving a Mack truck through things,” said Ben. “He’s been involved in several searches. None of them have resulted in saving someone, but I think finding the person gives the families closure.”

Uma is more subtle—more like a Ferrari, her owners say. She started training as a search and rescue dog at four months but didn’t like digging through rubble so the Butlers converted her to an avalanche dog.

The dog is rewarded with a game of tug and war as the patrollers discuss how to improve rescue attempts.

“It’s so great to be able to travel all over with them to do training,” said Sarah. “This is the first time they’ve ridden a gondola, the first time they’ve ridden a chairlift.”

A few minutes later, the Butlers boarded the Roundhouse Gondola. Sarah and Hogle would get off at the Roundhouse ski to the bottom of Roundhouse Slope where Sun Valley groomers had piled up snow to simulate avalanche terrain.

Ben and Uma would continue to the top of Bald Mountain where groomers had built three snow caves near the cat track leading from the top of Mayday lift to the Lookout Restaurant.

Once there, Ben joined others training to respond to one of the worst kinds of scenarios imaginable—an avalanche.

This dog settles right in on its way up Bald Mountain.

Every second counts in an avalanche. Nine out of 10 people can survive if found within 15 minutes; few survive after 30 minutes. And nothing—not avalanche transceivers, nor RECCO chips—measure up to the power of a dog’s nose to find victims who have been buried under snow.

Dogs are typically much more efficient and faster than using a probe line, which involves dozens of people in a line, sticking probes into the snow in hopes of making contact with the person who’s been buried.

“We’re just guessing, whereas a dog can pinpoint where the person is buried with their sense of smell,” said Linville. “Sometimes, the dogs are a skier’s best chance of survival.”

St. Bernards rescuing people in the Swiss Alps romanticized the idea of rescue dogs. And the use of avalanche dogs ramped up in the mid-1980s. Now most large ski resorts have avalanche dogs on staff—there’s believed to be 200to 300 certified avalanche dogs working in the United States and Canada.

On the top of Baldy one of the patrollers crawled into a snow cave while another packed the opening with snow. A third patroller brought his dog within sight of the snow cave. He dropped to his knees to see what his dog was seeing and to see how any wind might affect the scent--a dog’s foremost tool in finding a buried person.

Then he pointed his dog in the direction of the makeshift avalanche.

The dog barked, signaling its discovery, as it made a B-line to the snow pile. It began digging at the snow, the snow flying in the air behind it. And then it pushed its wet nose through, wrapping its teeth around a cloth tube the buried person had in his hands.

The dog began yanking until it had pulled the person out of the snowy domain.

Its reward: A game of tug and war.

The best avalanche dogs are active, inquisitive dogs with a high hunt and prey drive and the stamina to work more than five or six minutes, said Linville. They should be tall enough to move through deep snow with a thick coat to withstand cold.

“It helps if they’re medium sized so can we throw them over our shoulders and ski with them,” she added.

Rescue training starts with obedience training and getting the puppies comfortable around all sorts of conditions and noises, including snowmobiles and chairlifts.

They then graduate to games of hide and seek with their handlers showing them a toy, then hiding.

Linville worked with a ski patrol dog named Blaze for seven years before Blaze retired. She’s training a new dog to detect human remains for the county—something will come in handy come summer when people go missing.

“What we’re trying to do in these training sessions is learn how to communicate with our dog, to learn what our dog is trying to tell us,” she said. “One of the things we’ve learned is that there’s not just one way to do it. That’s why these courses happen. If there was one way to train our dogs, we’d all be doing it and there would be no questions. But all the dogs have their own personalities and even breed doesn’t guarantee anything.”

Sun Valley Ski Parol certified three new avalanche rescue dogs this year, while recertifying two others. Recertification is done every three years.

“It’s a misconception that once a dog learns to do something they never lose it,” said Linville. “If they don’t use it, they lose it, so consistent training is necessary.”