1 86 WAITING IN THE WILDERNESS 



plateau below were enormous snow cornices, 

 drifted and formed by the winter winds. I 

 saw several slides make rushing coasts, stirring 

 up white dust and filling the air with crashing 

 which the echoing mountain walls multiplied into 

 riots. 



Several times a slide in running dislodged 

 rock piles or snow piles and these in turn devel- 

 oped other slides, making a tremendous, con- 

 fusing uproar. An airplane in the sky above 

 might have had a show of gigantic snowy rockets 

 and meteors as the slides rushed down this slope 

 and that, exploding here and there in dust col- 

 umns as cliffs and walls were struck. 



Head-on a slide ran into a canon wall. The 

 pressure and violence of striking had changed 

 frozen the snow to ice. For more than one 

 hundred and fifty feet up on the wall, ice, snow, 

 and broken trees were frozen fast. 



About noon a large snow cornice fell away 

 and shot down the slope carrying numbers of 

 snowdrifts along with it. After a long run it 

 shot up the slope opposite, struck a big circular 

 basin, circled, and finally slid down the wall of 

 this back into its own track where it started up 

 the slope. It had run a loop. 



In the midst of an uproar I could hear crashes 

 and booming from the slope opposite me. This 

 steep slope was against a high plateau that 



