Black lab survives avalanche, week in the wild

HELENA, Mont. — Tom Pick was backcountry skiing with his 3-year-old black Labrador Lizzie in southwestern Montana when a small avalanche carried the dog down the side of the mountain.

She disappeared from his reach and into the swirling snow. Pick searched for two days with no sign of Lizzie — haunted by the sight of the dog's eyes gazing up at him as she fell.

"I'll probably always see her eyes just looking up at me as she slid down into that thing," Pick said in an interview this week. "You could tell that she was scared."

Pick eventually gave up on the search and assumed the dog was gone. So when the phone rang on Super Bowl Sunday and the caller told him Lizzie had been found, Pick assumed it was her body.

"As much as we still wanted to have hope, at some point you kind of lose it and brace yourself," Pick said.

Instead, it was tale of dogged survival. Lizzie had managed to survive not only the avalanche, but a week in the snowy backcountry before walking down the mountain and being spotted at a lake about five miles away.

Pick said he and his wife, Kathleen Williams, are "both still kind of pinching ourselves, afraid that it's a dream or something. We still don't know exactly what transpired."

Doug Chabot, an avalanche forecaster with Gallatin National Forest, noted Lizzie's safe return in his daily avalanche report Tuesday. "If the dog could talk, there would be a made-for-TV movie, motivational speaking tour and best-selling book," Chabot said.

Since Lizzie can't talk, Pick tells the story.

The last time Pick saw Lizzie was Jan. 27 as the two were moving up a ridge on Mount Blackmore, south of Bozeman. Lizzie had moved ahead of him and he was about to tell her to move away from the ridge when a cornice broke 8 to 10 feet from the edge, sparking the avalanche.

"Once the snow cleared on the bottom, I couldn't see anything. There was no response, there was nothing moving around. It was about as helpless a feeling as you could experience," Pick said.

The 58-year-old state water quality specialist made his way down the mountain and back up the avalanche chute to search for the dog. The next day, Chabot, the avalanche forecaster, tried to ski into the slide area, but a blizzard forced him to turn around.

Pick searched the day after that but still could not find Lizzie, who was a constant companion to him and his wife.

The couple, still grieving, were planning to attend a dinner with friends on Super Bowl Sunday when Pick's cellphone rang.

The caller, Jess Sullivan, told Pick that he and his family had been riding snowmobiles and ice fishing at Hyalite Reservoir when they noticed a black Labrador hanging around. He said they were among the last to leave and the dog didn't seem to be with anyone, so they brought her back to Bozeman and called the number on her tag.

"It turned out they live less than a mile from where we do," Pick said. "We were right over there and picked her up. Other than a pretty good cut on her head that had already started to heal, other smaller cuts and losing somewhere between five and 10 pounds, she looked great."

Williams took Lizzie to the vet the next day and she checked out fine, but the dog had to be gradually reintroduced to solid food.

For now, Lizzie, a keen bird-dog, will being staying close to home.

"Lizzie is, I think, officially retired," Pick said. "She's going to stick to the low-angle terrain from now on."