194 WAITING IN THE WILDERNESS 



ing down. For two hundred feet around the 

 snow was splashed with slide wreckage; broken 

 trees, rocks, and ice had torn up the snow and 

 plastered the trees on the side lines. It was a 

 head-on collision. But one side of the slide 

 coming down turned in after the crash and kept 

 on going. After a few hundred feet it jumped 

 over a cliff and wrecked a grove in the canon. 



On the way home I had a surprise, for I did 

 not expect to be taken as a passenger on a slide. 

 While I was snowshoeing down a smooth, steep 

 mountain side the snow suddenly skinned off 

 and slid, and my feet were knocked from under 

 me. It was fortunate I soon reached some trees 

 strong enough not to break from the shock, 

 as some did, for my slide was just beginning to 

 get into high speed when I was spilled off, 

 breathless, with my clothes torn, portions of the 

 slide jammed in my neck, and one snowshoe and 

 my hat missing. The snowshoe I found hours 

 later in the snow against a tree stump, but not 

 my hat. I reached the prospector's cabin at 

 midnight. 



About ten o'clock the following morning, while 

 I was repairing clothes and snowshoes, there came 

 a crash and roar as though a dozen slides were 

 running at once. Surely the old snow- and 

 ice-field had slipped at last, and I would see it 

 run. 



