It’s early afternoon and I’m sitting on a ridge just below the top of the Plan Joran cablecar on Les Grand Montets ski area in Chamonix. Whiteout conditions that brought at least six inches of fresh powder to the resort this morning are finally starting to abate, and when ski patroller Bernard Luc lets his golden retriever off the leash, he bounds off giddily sending plumes of snow up into the air in his wake.
Whether they’re riding the chairlift or running between their master’s legs as they ski downhill, patrol dogs like Utah draw smiles and shrieks of glee from passing skiers, but they're here to perform an essential safety role.
Tail wagging furiously, Utah darts right and left, moving in a coordinated zig-zag while Bernard skis alongside him and calls out commands in French. It looks like the the pair are playing a game of Hide and Go Seek and after about a minute, Utah finds his target in a mound of snow and starts barking and digging. Bernard hastily pulls off his backpack, takes out a shovel and begins digging. Two other patrollers join him and after a couple of minutes, a skier named Tom is hauled out, brushing snow from his jacket.
Tom is a plant. He’s a fellow journalist who was deliberately buried by patrol for Utah to simulate the process of locating and rescuing a skier buried in an avalanche. If this were a real-life scenario, Utah could have just saved Tom's life.
“Where I go, he goes"
Utah has been an avalanche dog for nearly two years and is one of several here in Chamonix. Together with Bernard, a 30-year veteran of ski patrol, the pair travels around the Savoie region when an emergency call comes in about an avalanche and helps search for victims.
“Where I go, he goes,” says Bernard, pointing to his wedding ring to indicate the closeness of the relationship.
At ski resorts like this one, ski patrol and the grooming crew work through the night to make the mountain safe for skiers, grooming terrain and chucking bombs to trigger avalanches on unstable snowpacks. In-bounds avalanches are rare, but for thrillseekers, the chairlift can present an opportunity to more easily reach the much coveted untouched powder of the backcountry, where avalanches are more common and where avalanche dogs do their best work.
Experienced backcountry skiers know to carry an avalanche beacon so they can signal for help if they get carried or buried by a slide. Some skiers wear backpacks with airbags that deploy in a slide to keep you buoyant. And increasingly, ski clothes like the Kvitfjell Race ski jacket I'm wearing right now from Helly Hansen are equipped with a RECCO detector which emits a passive signal to help rescue teams find you.
“Most of the time you find nothing"
Even with all that tech, if you get buried in an avalanche, statistics show you only have 15 minutes to live and that’s why avalanche dogs are such crucial members of the team. Avalanche dogs are usually first on the scene and can cover an area in 20 minutes that humans would take two hours to manually probe looking for survivors and victims.
“Most of the time you find nothing, which is great,” says ski patroller and dog handler Sebastien “Seb” Delacquis.
But sometimes, avalanche dogs are the difference between life and death. Only 10 days before our trip, an avalanche in Val d’Isère on the other side of Mont Blanc swept away four Estonian skiers, killing two. None of the skiers were carrying beacons and all were found by avalanche dogs.
I meet Seb in the bustling ski patrol hut just across the valley at Balme Vallorcine. He tells me he started his dog handling career with a German shepherd named Ilky in 2012. The job requires taking on the dog full time – it sleeps at the end of your bed, waits under the table during meals, and whines at the door when you leave just like any other dog. On work days, it rides the gondola with you and stays by your side as you carry out your duties.
“In his mind, he’s looking for a toy"
Ilky retired from patrol a couple of years ago and Seb had to find himself a new canine companion, which went down the same way most new pups are acquired. He went to the breeders, was faced with a new litter of eight and “he chose me”.
I’ll admit, I was hoping for a St. Bernard with a barrel of brandy round its neck when I was invited here by Helly Hansen to learn more about the dogs, but it’s hard not to love Vegas at first sight. At 10 months old, he is still bouncy and rambunctious, jumping up to shower Seb with welcome back kisses after he leaves the room for mere seconds and begging two ski patrollers to share their reheated pasta lunch with him. Already, however, the young pup can ride the gondola by himself and by next winter he’ll be joining Utah to help with search and rescue.
For now, Vegas and Seb are going through intensive training to make sure they're both ready, but as Seb tells me through a translator named Dmitri, that involves a lot of games.
“In his mind, he’s looking for a toy. If someone is under the avalanche the dog is looking for a toy – and the toy will be you. And then he will catch your smell."
Thanks to their incredibly keen sense of smell, dogs can be lightning-fast at locating people even under feet of snow. When ski patrol receives a callout to an avalanche, patrollers like Seb and Bernard hop in a helicopter with their canines and are usually first on the scene. They’ll position the dog downwind and instruct it to follow its nose.
“This kind of dog, most of them love games to understand everything and so it’s a positive way of education," says Seb.
"You feel that you understand each other"
Avalanche dogs come in many shapes and sizes – golden retrievers, border collies and Belgian shepherds are popular – but Seb explains that German shepherds make excellent avalanche dogs because they’re easy to train and love to please their masters. The only real downside of the breed is a tendency to develop arthritis, so it’s a good thing Seb is a big guy who can pick his dogs up.
It was a couple of years ago when they were scouring the debris of an avalanche looking for victims that Seb lifted Ilky up on the job for the last time.
“There was a spring avalanche so there was big blocks of snow, very heavy. The dog looked at Seb like ‘I might need some help because I’m too old to do it.’
After so many years of spending every waking moment together, Seb understood exactly what Ilky needed and hoisted him up, setting him on a snow block so he could conduct his search. It’s this special bond and communication that Seb says is the most rewarding part of taking on an avalanche dog.
“It’s like a child. Sometimes you just look him in the eyes and you feel that you understand each other. This is the best part of this job.”
And when there aren’t any avalanches? It’s a dog’s life for Utah and Vegas, providing company to their masters, entertaining the ski patrol team and bringing joy to skiers on the slopes.
