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Old May 25th, 2012, 10:30 PM
Rick C Rick C is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Southwest of Calgary, Alberta, on an acreage
Posts: 1,140
New adventures from Pete & Ruby

Lost my password for a while but thought I'd update you on the over-winter happenings of Pete & Ruby.

Ruby at daybreak at her home on the prairie, holding a chilled paw out of the fesh snow.



Below, Ruby up high in the Livingstone Range of the Rockies, southwest of Calgary, the prairie in the distance.



I've come here often in winter through the years, with Abby & Keeper and now Pete and Ruby. Usually a pretty safe place to be with a rounded summit, and a nice spot, with few trees to hide surprises, to let them roam a bit off leash. On this trip, however, on the higher point in the distance, heavy winds and fresh spring snow had allowed some cornice's, overhangs of snow, to develop. Pete got too close to the edge of one and went through, sledding about 10-15 feet and finding himself on the wrong side of an avalanche chute. It would have been a roughly 300 foot tumble had the slope given way.

I didn't know where he was except for Ruby trying to dig down to him and the occasional whimper from below. I walked upslope and finally got eyeballs on him but no amount of coaxing would get him to come through the deep snow to a safer exit point. He only wanted to leave the way he'd come down. I didn't want to go down there but leaving him for a few hours to go get help wasn't an option. I kicked through the cornice above him and made the one-way toboggan ride down to join him, Ruby in tow. With everyone leashed up in seconds, we made the rather nerve-wracking five minute sideslope walk to safety, finding some windblown bare ground, then pushed upward and outward. I hoisted them up and over another lip by their bums, then kicked my way up.

A few weeks later we drove near here and saw the slope was gone in the warming weather of Spring.

Rick's fault.

Below, before his episode, Pete at full gallop.



Pete in this wind-whipped place . . . one of the windiest places in Canada.



Below, after his rescue, a snow-blasted and exhausted Pete . . .



More below . . . .
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