SNOWSLIDES 185 



had just run the dead slide but it took me 

 nearly half an hour to traverse the distance which 

 the slide by actual timing had made in fifty-two 

 seconds. Occasionally, when there is more snow, 

 the Ferguson slide coasts even farther than this 

 one did, sometimes a quarter of a mile. 



The big, white dump was spread out over a 

 level flat and covered a space about three times 

 the size of a baseball diamond, four feet deep in 

 places. A part of the snow was jammed into 

 big, icy snowballs, chunks as big as a barrel, 

 but most of it looked like coarse white sand. 

 The Ferguson ran so often that it kept the gulch 

 well cleaned, and there was but little trash or 

 gravel in the snow. 



One windy day I came to a fresh snowslide 

 dump where slides had run down three gulches 

 that joined in a canon and piled their snow and 

 dirt in one huge heap to the depth of nearly 

 one hundred feet. A wagon road was buried. 

 But a tunnel had just been opened through this 

 snowy blockade. Remains of this well-packed 

 snow were still there the fourth of the following 



July. 



Another day I climbed high up on the slopes 

 of a peak, now called Mount Guyot I think, 

 surrounded by canons and steep, long slopes 

 without number. Clinging to the sides of one 

 of the sharp ridges that jutted out from the 



