AVALANCHE AND SLIDE-ROCK 289 



feet thick, and hangs with wonderful tenacity. A snow 

 comb is always a thing to be dreaded and shunned. If 

 the climber is upon its crest, it is liable to break away 

 under his feet, and dash him to destruction in the crush 

 and smother of an avalanche. If he is below it, its fall 

 upon him is equally fatal. These formations start many 

 an avalanche; and sometimes they are so compact and 

 hard that a huge section of a snow comb will roll down 

 a mountain-side intact. 



The steeper you find a mountain roof, the greater will 

 be the number of slides upon it; but the more numerous 

 they are, the narrower they are. On the mountain-side 

 opposite our camp on Goat Pass, there are twelve slides 

 in a mile, all very much alike and very nicely spaced. 

 Between twelve gullies there run up twelve fingers of 

 timber and stunted bushes, — on a dozen little ridges, like 

 the teeth of a comb. Near our camp on Avalanche 

 Creek, there were ten or twelve slides on one side within 

 a space of three miles, but they were much wider, and 

 more irregular. As I remember it, the one which piled 

 up the forty-foot hill of slide-rock over our creek was 

 fully a quarter of a mile wide at its base. 



Often we passed over fields of slide-rock so vast and 

 far removed from their parent cliffs, we were forced to 

 wonder how they were formed. The most extensive was 

 that found in the big bend of Avalanche Creek, which 

 rounds off the southwestern angle of Phillips Mountains. 

 Where our pack-train crossed it, on " the bloody trail," 

 it was fully half a mile wide, and I think it was half a 

 mile from bottom to top. 



