I missed the part about the PJ's being dropped off 15 miles from the snow cave; that is a long hike in those conditions. I like the overall plan; Plan A would be to pick them up directly with the HH-60. But they simultaneously activated Plan B with the PJ's hiking in, rather than waiting for Plan A to fail and then activating the back-up -- which could make for a very long delay. I wonder if the AF can write this off as training...

Yes they do. That seems to be a commonly misunderstood thing about the PJs. Note here I'm using "PJ" to refer to the whole operation, which includes the Pararescue guys, the Pave Hawks, C-130s, and all their support. In Alaska these are all components of the 176th Wing of the Air National Guard. The primary mission of the PJs is combat search and rescue, and in recent years at any given time a portion of the unit has usually been deployed "down range" in actual combat operations.

Like any combat unit, when not actually deployed in combat they are training for combat. Experience has shown that for their specialized mission of combat search and rescue, civilian SAR provides some of the best, most realistic training possible. Hence PJ units, both in the lower 48 and Alaska, intentionally allocate a portion of their training budget to civilian SAR missions. Thus civilian SAR is an intentional and integral part of their training plan.

Alaska is ideal in this respect. We have very difficult terrain, bad weather, and a very high frequency of missions. The air crew get to fly in very challenging conditions. The PJs get to keep their medical skills sharp by working on real hurt people, under true field conditions. About the only thing lacking from actual combat SAR is nobody is shooting at them. In my opinion it is a win/win for us taxpayers. The PJs get the most realistic training possible, and we civilians get our behinds saved!

Note that they don't necessarily accept any and all civilian SAR missions. For example for a purely medical mission, they won't take it if a private medevac company is available, capable, and willing to take the mission. Likewise for rescue missions, if the Alaska State Troopers can handle it using volunteer SAR teams the PJs will typically not get involved. And providing rescue support for other military training operations is always their priority over civilian SAR.

In southern Arizona, SAR used the capabilities of military helicopters to good effect on several occasions, and the military charged it off to training. The Air Force birds were particularly valuable because of their hoist capability. lives were definitely saved that would have been lost if alternative means of extrication would have been employed...

Doug beat me to it, posting this story. Note that this is the same incident covered in the Once more into the arctic thread. Mods might want to consider merging the threads?

Some more details on this story:
Skiers rescued from Harding Ice Field hoped their snow cave wouldn't become a tomb
Sounds like except for not having a shovel, they were reasonably prepared. They had a tent, sleeping bags and pads, a stove, and a locater beacon (sounds like an Inreach).

Note that having a snow cave slowly sag inward is not uncommon with a cave dug in soft snow, and lots of new snow being dumped on top. I've had that happen.

As noted above, the one critical thing they didn't carry was a shovel. A shovel is an absolutely key survival item in big snow country. Other than that they seemed to be quite well prepared, both in gear, and (crucially) in attitude. True survival is always graded pass/fail. They passed.