Tahoe Avalanche

by Todd Borg

  The dogs charged ahead, toenails digging in, glad for the mobility provided by hardpack snow.

  “Look,” Ellie said. She pointed down the mountain.

  I followed her line of sight and saw the truck sitting on top of a tree trunk. The truck sat well below the highway, and was firmly perched on a smooth straight Ponderosa pine trunk that had broken cleanly off. It looked like a post-modern, post-apocalypse tree-house, three stories high. The ground below was solid with the compacted snow left by the avalanche, much like a ski run that had been groomed multiple times. The nearby trees that survived the slide were devoid of all branches from the ground up to maybe fifty feet in the air. Clouds raced by above. A snow shower gave way to a fast-opening vertical tunnel with gray for walls and blue sky at the top. In seconds, the tunnel folded and collapsed and another burst of snow came where sunlight had stabbed down to the earth a moment before.

  “Where should we start our search?” I asked.

  Ellie stopped and surveyed the landscape. “Assuming that the boy was out of his pickup when the avalanche hit, his body could be nearly anywhere.” She pointed up toward the highway. “I suppose it’s possible that someone swept off the highway could have been rolled under the slide and deposited just below the guardrail with the bulk of the snow rushing by overhead. But it’s more likely that a person would have been carried far down the mountain, maybe even most of the way toward the beach at Emerald Bay.” She pointed down to the blue water, so beautiful and so deadly cold.

  “In an avalanche search,” I said, “what works best for a dog trying to find a scent? Starting at the top and working down, or going from the bottom up?”

  Ellie was shaking her head. “It’s not about the lay of the land. It’s about the wind. When a victim is buried in snow, there is no trail for a dog to track. It is an air-scenting exercise. The best strategy is to start with the dog downwind, which provides the best chance that the dog finds a scent.”

  We both stopped and lifted our heads to the breeze.

  “The wind is out of the west or southwest,” I said. I turned and pointed northeast down the slope toward where the Vikings-holm Castle sat hidden in the trees. “Somewhere down there, at the farthest point of the slide, would be the downwind point. Should we hike all the way down before we start?”

  “That would be best. A buried victim gives off a scent that percolates up through the snow. Once the scent comes out of the snow it moves out with the wind, gradually expanding, in the shape of a cone. We need to get the dog into that scent cone.”

  We started down the mountain. I looked across the slide, a surprisingly hard river of snow. “Seems like this snow is so compacted and dense that no scent would come through,” I said.

  “The deeper and denser the snow, the slower the percolation rate of the scent,” Ellie said. “But the nose of a dog is an astonishing thing. Dogs are often able to pick up smells where common sense would suggest no smell exists.”

  “What about a victim that’s dead compared to one that’s alive?” I asked.

  “I don’t know of any scientific studies that have been done on that,” Ellie said. “But anecdotal evidence suggests that dogs are almost as good at finding the dead as the living.”

  “They just don’t like it as much?” I said.

  “No, they don’t.”

  We hiked in silence for a while, the dogs running ahead.

  Ellie was huffing a little as she stepped her snowshoes with care to avoid falling. I stayed a little downslope from her, just in case she slipped and fell and slid.

  “An interesting bit of search and rescue trivia,” Ellie said, “is that when a dog alerts on the scent of a buried human and digs toward the person, they often go directly to the person’s head. We don’t even know what, exactly, the dogs are smelling.”

  “Could it be the scent they track only comes off the head?”

  “Seems like it. Or maybe our entire bodies radiate the scent, but the strongest concentration comes off our heads.”

  Fifteen minutes later we were at the lowest reaches of the slide. A little above and north of us the river from Eagle Lake spilled over the falls before its last rush to Tahoe’s only bay. Past the river, hidden in the huge pines, was the Vikingsholm Castle, dark and quiet until the onslaught of next summer’s tourists.

  Ellie looked up the mountain. “This is a good place to start.” She turned toward where Honey G and Spot were running through a stand of fir trees.

  Ellie whistled, then called out in her very small voice, “Honey G, come!”

  It was amazing to watch the response as Honey G immediately stopped and charged up toward Ellie. Honey G stopped in front of Ellie, his wagging eager, his panting like a happy smile.

  Ellie, as limber as I am, kneeled down in the snow in front of the retriever. She turned him to face up the mountain, then put one gloved hand on the back of his neck and the other hand on the front of his chest.

  She spoke loud, her voice intense and excited. “Honey G, there is a victim in the snow!” she said, passing her excitement on to Honey G. “I want you to find the victim. Do you know what I want?” She vibrated her hands on his body. “I want you to find the victim.”

  Ellie stood and turned toward the vast area of the slide. She made an obvious pointing motion with her arm. “Find, Honey G! Find!” She tapped him on his back, and he took off.

  Honey G ran across the snow at medium speed, his nose in the air. Spot loped along after him, aware that Honey G had a mission but not quite knowing what it was. I’d done some search training with Spot in the past, but always gave him a human scent to start with. Searching for a buried human without a starter scent was new territory for him.

  Honey G went up at an angle to the right, his head still high, swinging back and forth. In thirty yards he came to the edge of the slide and plunged into the deep undisturbed snow. He stopped, turned and looked at us. Ellie made an exaggerated pointing motion with her arm. Honey G ran the way she directed him, back up onto the slide residue, and he ran to a point directly above us. He looked to Ellie again. She made another hand signal and Honey G zigzagged his way across the slide, gradually moving up the mountain. Ellie and I hiked up after him, taking a gentle angle up and across the mountain.

  “When I give Spot a scent off clothing,” I said to Ellie, “I can send him on a fairly effective search. But I’ve never tried a search without a starting scent.”

  “But he does have a scent to search for,” Ellie said. “In our training he’s learned that the command ‘find the victim’ means to find any human scent that isn’t what’s coming from the people he’s with. It’s actually quite easy to train a dog in that way. You just set up the standard situation where a person hides under the snow and you use the command ‘find the victim.’ A smart dog figures it out after his first successful find. He doesn’t even have to think about it. We don’t technically know if the dog searches for a scent that is distinct from the scents of the people around him or not. But it is easy to see that as soon as he gets the command, he knows what his job is, to find the scent of a person who’s lost or buried.

  “And when you give Spot a scent off someone’s clothing,” Ellie continued, “he may not be as focused on that particular scent as much as you think. Don’t get me wrong. Dogs can certainly distinguish individual human scents. A blind-folded dog can easily pick his owner out of a group of people without any voice to help him. But in most search situations, it may be mostly that the clothing just lets him know that you want him to find a human scent.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I could have him scent any hat, then send him onto the avalanche area and he’d go find the buried person whether the hat belonged to the person or not?”

  “Right. Remember when the arsonist was setting the forest fires? We gave Natasha the scent of a drop of gasoline. We wanted to prime her to search for any fire accelerants. She understood that any similar smells were her target. Gasoline, kerosene, or any other volatile organic compounds. T
he point of having her sniff gasoline in the beginning was just to let her know it was an accelerant search and not another lost person search.

  “With an avalanche dog, we train him to do the search without using any scent as a starting point. It’s like when you get up in the morning and tell your dog to find the Frisbee. The dog finds it without being given any advance smell.”

  Ellie paused to watch Honey G. He’d turned yet again and was coming back across the slide when he stopped again. He looked down at us. Ellie pointed to the left and he went in that direction, slower now. Spot had stopped below Honey G and watched, no doubt catching his breath.

  “Looks like Honey G’s interest is waning,” I said.

  “No. He’s winded, but he’s a real worker. Even as a puppy, if I told him to search for his tennis ball, he’d never give up until either he found it or a different tennis ball or I called him off. He’s even more dedicated when searching for a person.”

  Ellie and I had been traversing the slope at a gentle angle. We came to the edge of the slide, turned and started back across. “Good to turn,” Ellie said. “It’s hard on my ankles and knees to always lean one way.”

  “Me, too.”

  Honey G came back across the slide again, his focus intense.

  Spot continued to watch him, but after Honey G’s fifth or sixth zigzag across the landscape, Spot figured it out. When Honey G struck out on yet another circuit across the mountain, Spot ambled straight up the slope and then stopped. Sure enough, Honey G’s next circuit brought him right to where Spot was waiting.

  More than most dogs, Spot was at home in the snowy mountain woods, familiar with its secrets and surprises. But watching him observe Honey G was like watching the street-smart kid on the playground who is unable to understand the drive and purpose of the class valedictorian.

  Ellie and I continued to follow Honey G and headed up the mountain. Straight up the mountain above us sat the truck in the tree.

  “Should we rest a little?” I asked.

  “That would be good,” Ellie said. She was breathing hard, and I realized I’d waited too long to stop.

  “What about Honey G,” I said. “Does he need to rest?”

  “Honey G is an overachiever,” Ellie said. “He doesn’t rest. He just keeps working. The job is what gives him purpose.”

  Above us loomed the mountains that wrap around Emerald Bay. Storm clouds encircled their peaks, but the 3000-foot icy rock walls sheltered the bay from the wind. A gentle drift of flakes came quietly, muffling the distant sound of the rotary up above us on the highway.

  “The breeze is gentle but steady,” Ellie said, looking at the even drift of falling snowflakes. “If there is any kind of scent cone on this mountain, Honey G should have found it by now.”

  “If we get back to the top and he hasn’t alerted yet, do you think there could still be someone buried here?”

  Ellie was shaking her head. “I doubt it.”

  “Even considering how thick and solid the slide is?”

  “It’s possible, but I still doubt it. Honey G would find him.”

  We started up the mountain again. Twenty minutes later, we were almost directly under the pickup in the tree. I was looking up at the mangled, ice-encrusted shape when Ellie spoke.

  “Here we go!” she said. She pointed toward Honey G. The dog had his nose in the air, zigzagging across the surface with frantic intensity. “He’s alerting! He found a scent!”

  FIVE

  Honey G ran up the slope, moving back and forth, sniffing the air and narrowing in on an area thirty yards above us. He stopped abruptly, dug a couple of strokes with his paws, stuck his nose into the little hole and sniffed hard. He made a high bark and started digging furiously.

  Ellie went up the slope with the energy of a teenager. She kneeled next to him. “Good boy, Honey G!”

  Honey G dug like a trenching machine, snow flying out between his rear legs.

  “The compressed snow is very hard,” I said as I unstrapped my shovel.

  Ellie nodded. “Be careful not to hit his paws.”

  I started four feet away. I had to swing hard with the shovel to penetrate the frozen surface. It felt uncomfortable to stab down with such fervor, because although I was certain that March Carrera would be dead, I nevertheless didn’t want to plunge my shovel into a body.

  When I started digging, Spot, too, came over, no doubt remembering the couple of times he and I had done search training on snow. He moved around, sniffing at the snow. He must have found a promising scent for he started digging with vigor midway from me to Honey G.

  While Honey G dug remarkably well, Spot’s size and his very long legs allowed him to go down twice as fast.

  My shovel was even more effective. In ten minutes I hit a fallen tree about five feet down. The tree must have cast a kind of impact shadow, for the snow in the area below it and down the slope was much less compacted. Some loose snow fell away and my shovel went into a small space.

  I called out, “Ellie? Can you get Honey G down here? I found a softer area, and I think he can go laterally from here.”

  She appeared above me. “Honey G,” she said. “Down there.” She pointed down at me.

  “C’mere, Honey G,” I said. “Take a sniff down here.”

  Honey G looked at Ellie for reassurance, then jumped down next to my feet.

  “Find the victim, Honey G!” I said.

  Honey G turned around, sniffing the walls of my snow cave, then stuck his nose under the tree trunk. He made another yip and dove under the tree, digging frantically.

  The space was too small to get my shovel in without hitting Honey G, so I worked on the sides of the hole, widening my snow pit, careful to throw the snow up and away from where Ellie was standing. Spot stood next to her, his brow furrowed as he stared at where Honey G had disappeared under the tree.

  In a minute I heard Honey G stop digging. My snow cave was now wide enough that I could get down on my hands and knees and look under the tree trunk. It was too dark to see anything but a vague shape of Honey G. I pulled off my backpack, got out my small flashlight and shined it toward Honey G. He turned around to look toward me, his eyes flashing in my light beam. He whimpered.

  “Honey G, come out of there.” I patted my thigh. He turned around and dug some more, then stopped and cried. “Ellie?” I said loudly. “Can you call Honey G? I think he’s found the body. I need him to move so I can have a look.”

  “Honey G, come here,” she said.

  Honey G crawled out of the hole, out from under the tree trunk and jumped out of the snow pit.

  I didn’t look up toward Ellie because I wanted my eyes to adjust to darkness. I got down on my belly, held the flashlight in my teeth and squirmed under the tree trunk toward the dark hole.

  It was a tight fit. I moved forward inches at a time, my jacket catching on the bark of the tree. I took the light out of my mouth and shined it ahead of me. My eyes gradually adjusted, and I saw snow and branches and more snow. There was nothing that looked like a body.

  I belly-crawled forward until I could scrape away at the snow where Honey G had been digging. I dug through branches and twigs and snow until I hit something with a different consistency. Thin and solid, but flexible. Like a carrot. I scraped at more snow. It was hard enough that I could barely abrade it with my gloved hand.

  I was trying to inch forward when the top of my tiny wormhole tunnel collapsed. The snow buried my head and arms and my flashlight. I was trapped in the dark, my arms pinned. I felt like an idiot, remembering that compacted snow from a slide makes a good solid material for digging snow caves. Difficult to dig, but strong. Whereas the loose snow, protected from the slide by the tree I was under, hadn’t been compacted. The very quality that made this snow easy to dig through also made it dangerously unstable.

  My butt and legs were still under the tree trunk. I wormed my way backward. I got just far enough that I could pull my arms free. Again, I held the flashlight with my m
outh and used both hands to try to sweep the snow free.

  There was less room than before. I moved my head to try to get the light angled just so. But I couldn’t see anything. The most sensible approach was to squeeze back out of the tunnel, climb out and dig down from above.

  But I was so close. If I could just verify that it was in fact the body that Honey G had discovered, then we’d know that March Carerra hadn’t escaped the avalanche. I wouldn’t have to dig. I could leave him there, call the El Dorado Sheriff’s Department and let them do the hard work.

  Once again I squirmed forward, gouging at the snow with my fingers, pulling it away, trying to compact it to the side so it didn’t fill my space. I made a little progress, then moved forward another couple inches.

  My tunnel was nearly full, so I pounded at the snow with my fists, trying to compress it down and to the sides. I made a little more space. Inched forward. Dug some more.

  The first thing I uncovered was hair, matted into the snow, glinting in the beam from my flashlight. I wasn’t eager to go further, but I had to be certain I hadn’t uncovered an animal. A mountain lion or a bear could get caught in an avalanche just as easily as a person.

  I scraped away at the snow and found the carrot. It was a finger. The position of the fingers next to the matted hair suggested his hand was cupped around his face.

  I twisted my head trying to angle the light with my mouth. I panted with effort and sucked air through my teeth around the flashlight. My breath made clouds of steam that filled my tiny space with fog.

  By gently pulling on his head with one hand and using my other hand to push away at the frozen snow around his hand, I was able to expose his head.

  The flashlight was still in my mouth. I shifted my jaw and got the flashlight beam to shine directly on his face.

  Her face.

  The body belonged to a young woman.

  SIX

  The body buried under the avalanche had a thin delicate jaw. The snow and ice had pressed one corner of her mouth back into a frozen half-smile. She had good teeth. Graceful arched eyebrows. One eye was shut, the other eye was peeking out as if trying to see what things looked like from the perspective of death. Now I understood why the hair had glinted in my flashlight. It was blond. I guessed her to be in her early twenties.