AVALANCHE AND SLIDE-ROCK 281 



and useful in paring down steep mountains, and filling 

 up narrow valleys. Incidentally, they furnish early pas- 

 tures for the mountain flocks, and the best of hunting- 

 grounds for men who come with rifles to take toll of the 

 wilds. 



The eastern mountain-side on Avalanche Creek was 

 an ideal section for the study of Nature's methods as 

 manifested in slides. The story of the avalanche was 

 written out along miles of roof-like slopes, and divided 

 into many chapters. I spent hours in climbing over them, 

 and in trying to read aright the things written there. 



One incident that awakens one to a realizing sense 

 of the majesty, and at times the terrors, of the forces ex- 

 erted in that spot is finding the brawling waters of the 

 creek disappearing under a hill of slide-rock nearly forty 

 feet high! The avalanches have rushed this great mass 

 down from the Phillips Mountains, and piled it clear 

 across the valley. But for the open-work character of 

 this great natural dam, which permits the waters of the 

 creek to run under it in its original bed, the valley above 

 it would now be a lake, thirty feet deep at the spot where- 

 on our camp stood. As the perpendicular face of the east- 

 ern mountain is split off and thrown down by water 

 freezing and expanding in its millions of crevices, the 

 annual spring snow-slide gathers up a few thousand tons 

 or so, rushes it down the icy slope at express-train speed, 

 and spreads it a quarter of a mile wide over the surface 

 of the existing hill. It is mixed with thousands of tons 

 of snow, as a matrix, but ere long the latter melts away, 

 and there remains only an innocent looking hill bestrewn 



