Brief by Allen Best
Pets – June 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Occasionally, there is good news amid the bad. The bad news occurred April 9 when a 25-year-old man from India, Jigmet Dawa, died in an avalanche in the Sawatch Range southwest of Leadville.
After being swept away by an avalanche that broke at the 12,600-foot elevation, Dawa was found pinned against a tree under three feet of snow on Brown’s Peak, which is located about a mile from Mt. Huron. Unharmed were two human companions and three dogs.
But still missing was a fourth dog, called Tiga, a Burmese mountain dog. In mid-April, six searchers set out to find the dog’s body. In digging through the avalanche debris they found nothing. So, after hanging a prayer flag on the tree where Dawa died, they set back down the mountain.
The dog, famished and limping, showed up at the trailhead. Nobody seems to know how the animal escaped the avalanche.
