Photo: Avery Vucinich via Alaska Dispatch News
Snowmobilers Marty Mobley, Rob Uphus, and Avery Vucinich were riding Hatcher Pass in Alaska, a good 55 or so miles northeast of Anchorage, when they saw moose tracks. They saw ski tracks as well, which was strange, at least for the area. Hatcher Pass (affectionately referred to as God’s Country by locals) is known for its avalanche dangers, a worthy reputation given the situation Mobley, Uphus, and Vucinich found themselves in.
According to Alaska Dispatch News, on December 28, the three men saved what they believed to be a young cow on the Willow side of the pass. They were riding carefully — “Mobley’s best friend, Aaron Arthur, was killed along with five others while snowmachining in Turnagain Pass on March 21, 1999” — when they came across the tracks. Not thinking much of it at the beginning, they passed through the first time around, figuring they scared the moose off. But on their way back an hour later, the tracks were completely covered. An avalanche had poured into the bowl.
They slowed down, and as them moved with caution, they began to see moving brown object sticking through the snowpack. Considering that it might be a person’s limb, they quickly investigated. Mobley explained to the ADN: “It looked like a guy’s arm at first because we were expecting to see a skier. But it was moaning and groaning and moving and we realized it was a moose, even though only his ears and some of its snout was sticking out of the snow… There was just enough of its snout sticking above the snow that it could breathe.”
Mobley and his friends grabbed shovels and began digging out the docile moose, going in two-person shifts as the third kept an avalanche lookout. About three-quarters uncovered, the moose looked injured, so the men gently poked its backside with a shovel.
“It stood right up and towered over us, because we were in kind of a hole from the digging,” Mobley said. “It looked like the abominable snowman because its fur was so packed with snow and it looked at us, shook the snow off it, and off it went.”
Everyone loves a happy ending.
Read the entire story on Alaska Dispatch News’s ADN.com.
