It was the first weekend of the summer season here in Leysin and although the weather forecast was unsettled the lifts were running and a couple of the mountain restaurants were open. I’d a day planned with one of our guests and I’d hoped we could get onto the tops here and get some good views. I’d been up and around the same area a few days before but there was still a fair amount of snow around so I wasn’t 100% sure how accessible some places would be.
We set off from the Les Fers restaurant and headed to the Lac Mayen via a short section of fixed gear and under the fantasic limestone cirque under the tours Mayen & Famelon. As we got a bit higher the snow covered the path but it was possible to pick a way through the boulders up to the Lac Segray. I’d have liked to go to the top of the tour de Mayen but there was a lot of snow on the track out of Lac Segray and it wasn’t practical.
The other track out of the lake wasn’t snow covered but most of it was lying at the bottom of the hill as a result of some minor landslides. Despite it being a bit awkward we managed to find a way onto the top and were rewarded with some views of the area between cloud banks. Even then, I wasn’t 100% we’d get all the way along the ridge. It’s limestone pavements or ‘lapiaz’ in the local dialect (Arpitan, a Franco-Provençal language) which is like a fissured and cracked limestone and it’s awkward to cross in the summer but right now there’s still some snow making it difficult and a little dangerous. The snow’s transformed to ‘névé’ which is another Arpitan word to describe a granular snow that’s partially melted and then compacted and refrozen. The danger is that the surface can fail and you fall through into rocks or small, and even not so small, holes. The bigger sections can be fairly stable but it’s worth avoiding by sticking to the rocks, the worst sections are generally the smallest which are often hollow and easy to displace.
So, given the hazard I was a bit surprised as were making our way through this to see a couple of people coming towards us with a big dog. I couldn’t immediately see what it was but it looked like some sort of big local mastiff bred for the mountains here. In fact, I said to Mike I thought it looked a bit odd to try and take a dog here. The story became clear a couple of minutes later when we met two Dutch guys but no sign of the dog, they told us the dog had followed them but slipped on the snow and slid into one of fissures in the rocks.
Looking at the snow I think what had really happened was the dog was on the snowpack and had walked into a narrow section between some rocks. As I described, this would have been pretty hollow underneath and I think it sheared tipping the dog back a little who had scrabbled forward then failed to get much grip and slid back into a hole in the rocks. When I scrambled down to the dog I could see the fractures in the snow pack fairly clearly.
What I saw when I got onto the snow was a young male Saint Bernard dog, I guessed about 18 months old, in a bit of distress in a hole between rocks and snow, a hole deep enough that he couldn’t get out on his own. My first thought was that this was going to be impossible and we’d need some help and preferably someone with a suitable harness for a dog and winch. I then had the idea to see if I could break the rest of the slab the dog had broken and drop the snow into the hole. At the least I thought it would open the hole up and not be so claustrophobic for him but I thought I might be able to get enough blocks of snow to build a ramp and get him nearer the surface. Of course being summer I’d not got a snow shovel with me which would have made quick work of the snow!
Fortunately the dog got the basics of the plan quite quickly and as I dropped snow down started to get his paws on it and stepped onto my ramp, you can see him getting nearer the surface in the photo Mike took above. The next part of the plan was to get a sling around his shoulders, I couldn’t possibly lift a 80-100 kg adult Saint Bernard but I thought I could give him a boost. At worst, I thought I could add the rope and get the other three guys to give a pull as well, you can waste time rigging very elaborate systems and ignore the obvious brute force you’ve got on the scene in my opinion.
Luckily that worked, he’s a young strong dog so once he’d got somewhere to stand he was able to mostly pull himself out with a quick boost from me as well. I’m explaining to him the dangers of névé snow in this area in the above photo’. I’ve not done any animal first aid courses but I figure a lot of it’s the same as people so under the guise of patting and stroking the dog I give him a quick once over for obvious injuries and he seems basically fine.
Luckily this had happened not too far from edge of this lapiaz section and we’d not got too far to get back to more solid ground, even so it took Mike and I a little while to coax the dog back who was a bit nervous of the ground by that time! Once we got to the main path Mike selflessly sacrificed his water for the dog who looked ready for a drink by then.
I’d managed to get hold of the owner on the telephone and arranged to meet them back at the Les Fers restaurant where we’d left the car but we decided the dog would be fine on his own for a while tied up while we made a quick ascent of the tour de Famelon. I’d have turned around if the dog seemed bothered about being left but we could see him from the path and he just settled down for a quick nap as, not surprisingly, he must have been exhausted by that time. In a fluke of timing as we came down from the top the owner, a local farmer, was walking up up the other track and we all arrived with dog at the same time. Not surprisingly the dog was very happy to be reunited with his owner.
So a nice happy ending! It had been a good hike anyway, I reckon we were probably the first to take that route this season; it was certainly more snow covered a few days back. It does demonstrate though that spring conditions and snow can be a bit dangerous, the dog is about the same weight as grown man and that was enough to break through the snow. As an International Mountain Leader, and being with a client, I’d got a bunch of kit with me, ropes, slings and so on. Being able to extract people from tricky situations is part of our training and assessment and although there’s no one technique there’s a general theme to improvise so I think my snow ramp was a good solution.
It’s a bit odd that Saint Bernard dog figure so much in my work recently, I do the winter trips to the Grand Saint Bernard Hospice and we visit the dogs at the museum so I’m often talking about them and their history but I didn’t expect to be rescuing the rescue dog!
And a big thanks to Mike for a great day and the assistance!
