January 6, 2015: Moose rescued from avalanche

[Undertoad]

In a story noticed by our old friends at Neatorama, first found at Alaska Dispatch News...

So there they are, three guys snowmachining in Hatcher Pass, Alaska, when they come across tracks in the snow: a bunch of moose, and to their interest, a skier, which is more rare. Come back through an hour later, and they didn't see the tracks, because there had been an avalanche.

They were concerned about the skier, and saw something moving in the snow, so they made their way over to dig out what they thought was his arm, and...

"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."

Mobley said the men grabbed their shovels and began to dig the moose out of the snow. Mobley said it didn’t move as they worked and even seemed to get calmer as they cleared snow away. Mobley said two men dug while the other served as an avalanche lookout.

"It didn’t even fight us," Mobley said. "It was like, 'Help me. Help me.' It was totally docile and let us touch it. It just (lay) there," Mobley said.

After about 10 minutes of digging, Mobley said, the men were able to free about three-quarters of the animal and weren't sure if it was injured. So one of the men gently poked the moose's 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."

Mobley said the moose was "at full steam" when it ran down the mountain and appeared to be completely uninjured, something that surprised the men.

Well done Rob Uphus, Marty Mobley (in the pic above) and Avery Vuchinch (who took the picture).