Print article An Anchorage man died Friday when the snowcat he was driving broke through lake ice in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the Alaska State Troopers said. Scott Gagne, 57, was driving the snowcat around 4:30 p.m. on Hewitt Lake near Skwentna when the large tracked vehicle fell through the ice, troopers wrote in an online report. Austin McDaniel, a spokesman for the troopers, described the snowcat as a “a larger tracked vehicle with a front plow that was transporting a snowmachine.” Snowcats are often used to groom ski trails, but McDaniel said it was not clear if Gagne was grooming a trail when the machine broke through the ice.
People out skiing and snowmobiling in Darby Canyon on Saturday were greeted with an unusual sight: a team of draft horses pulling a Ford F150 off of the groomed trail.
Matt Sullivan, the manager at WreckerBoyz Towing in Driggs, got the call around 1 a.m. on Saturday morning. Some college kids from Rexburg had bypassed the large warning sign at the end of 3000S that prohibits wheeled vehicles up Darby in the winter, squeezed through the access gate, and made it around a mile up the groomed trail before getting high-sided and mired in deep snow.
âWhen people do stuff like that, we donât want to drive up there to tow them out,â Sullivan said. âThe snowcat groomers are all up there busting their butts to make a good trail, and the Forest Service closes the road for a reason. Fortunately WreckerBoyz is going through a rebirth and we now have a partnership with AJ Woolstenhulme.â
only where outside the long lines of the resorts, somewhere in the back country. by the way, i am the guy in the back country. smiling ear-to-ear. reporter: as a meteorologist, i thought i had to the inside track on when the snow would dump? here with the big powder cats, they know when the tsunami is co when the snow is coming. it comes from people s desire to stip long lines, vir actually agreeing the deepest powdery turns one can imagine. traversing untouched terrain comes with challenges, that s why they enlist expert guides and machinery to transport customers to the best snow in their lives. i like an snowcat to having a