Alaskans Marty Mobley, Rob Uphus, and Avery Vucinich were snowmobiling around Hatcher Pass last week, wary of the possibility of an avalanche. The men had noticed moose tracks and ski tracks in a particular area, but when they returned a hour later, the tracks were gone- because an avalanche had occurred in the interim. The three immediately began looking for stranded skiers, but found no one. What they found was a snout sticking out of the snow.
"It looked like a guy's arm at first because we were expecting to see a skier," Mobley said. "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."
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.
Read the rest of the story, which has a happy ending, at Alaska Dispatch News. -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Avery Vucinich)