The Alaska Moose Federation's snow cat driver was contacted by the Seward Fire Department this last Friday evening for an emergency rescue of a snowmachiner who drove off of a cliff 11 miles off the Seward Highway. There were many emergency agencies who originally responded on Friday but nearly all of their snowmachines were sunk in the Snow River at different locations while attempting to reach the injured snowmachiner.
The AMF's 1994 Tucker 2000 was then brought to the trailhead where, in total whiteout conditions, the cat built the trail in while retrieving 6 snowmachines from different locations on the river. It was blizzard conditions with 2 feet of fresh snow on the way in and an additional foot on the way out. The first picture below is the unit working its way up a river out of Seward on a sunny day last winter which was definitely not what we were working this last weekend.
This snow cat is typically used to groom snow trails, parallel to Kenai Peninsula highways, which give moose alternative walking areas to the highways where they all too often are hit by vehicles. As you can tell in the photos, we secured the rescue sled to the roof rack which was really sinking the snowmachines in the river.
Thanks to our seasoned operator, our Tucker made it safely to within 2 miles of the injured snowmachiner before the weather cleared enough to get the party out. They were planning on securing him either up on top of the rack inside of the rescue sled or across our grooming bar which definitely would have definitely brought him out. The story is at http://www.adn.com/kenai/story/1128125.html.
The AMF is happy that we could help and, with the newly arrived 36" of snow, the moose will likely be heading to the highways so we'll be posting some more stories soon of our upcoming mitigation efforts. Great job Jason and to all the hard working folks in this effort who would push into a blizzard to save somone who needed help!
The AMF's 1994 Tucker 2000 was then brought to the trailhead where, in total whiteout conditions, the cat built the trail in while retrieving 6 snowmachines from different locations on the river. It was blizzard conditions with 2 feet of fresh snow on the way in and an additional foot on the way out. The first picture below is the unit working its way up a river out of Seward on a sunny day last winter which was definitely not what we were working this last weekend.
This snow cat is typically used to groom snow trails, parallel to Kenai Peninsula highways, which give moose alternative walking areas to the highways where they all too often are hit by vehicles. As you can tell in the photos, we secured the rescue sled to the roof rack which was really sinking the snowmachines in the river.
Thanks to our seasoned operator, our Tucker made it safely to within 2 miles of the injured snowmachiner before the weather cleared enough to get the party out. They were planning on securing him either up on top of the rack inside of the rescue sled or across our grooming bar which definitely would have definitely brought him out. The story is at http://www.adn.com/kenai/story/1128125.html.
The AMF is happy that we could help and, with the newly arrived 36" of snow, the moose will likely be heading to the highways so we'll be posting some more stories soon of our upcoming mitigation efforts. Great job Jason and to all the hard working folks in this effort who would push into a blizzard to save somone who needed help!