SNOWSLIDES 191 



and one can see its long, gouged opening from 

 starting to stopping place. But not always. A 

 slide in a crooked canon winds like a stream. 

 Often if one starts down a fishhook-bent gulch 

 it will follow the bends. But it may jump over 

 a low wall; and, occasionally, when a slide is 

 speeding down a crooked gulch, it jumps out. 



I was one day walking serenely along the top 

 of a canon when a slide in the canon concluded 

 to jump out. Wildly rumbling and roaring, a 

 mass of snow and snow-dust suddenly shot up 

 and out at me. In the cloud of snow-dust I 

 lost sight of everything. Then came a rush of 

 wind, and through the cleared air I saw the slide 

 turn a somersault out of a canon and land on 

 its back on the wall opposite. For half a minute 

 or longer a great white column of smoke screen 

 snow-powder and snow-dust filled the canon and 

 rose higher and higher until it was perhaps a 

 quarter of a mile high. In rushing down the 

 canon and in ramming the wall, tons of snow and 

 ice had been crushed to powder and this caught 

 up by the excited air had made a strange, grand 

 display. I had seen slides do high-jumping, 

 dive over canons, side-swipe a wall and tip bot- 

 tom side up, but this somersaulting was a new 

 stunt for slides. 



Well up the slope above Hoosier Pass I found 

 an old snowdrift which had lain for years. It 



