piled snows, I saw many a snowy hill and em- 

 bankment released. Some of these, as slides, 

 made meteoric plunges from summit crags to 

 gentler places far below, 



A snow-storm prevailed during my first 

 night in the slide region, and this made a de- 

 posit of five or six inches of new snow on top of 

 the old. On the steeper places this promptly 

 slipped off in dry, small slides, but most of it 

 was still in place when I started to climb higher. 



While I was tacking up a comparatively 

 smooth slope, one of my snowshoes slipped, 

 and, in scraping across the old, crusted snow, 

 started a sheaf of the fluffy new snow to slip- 

 ping. Hesitatingly at first, the new snow 

 skinned off. Suddenly the fresh snow to right 

 and left concluded to go along, and the full 

 width of the slope below my level was moving 

 and creaking; slowly the whole slid into swifter 

 movement and the mass deepened with the 

 advance. Now and then parts of the sliding 

 snow slid forward over the slower-moving, 

 crumpling, friction-resisted front and bottom. 



With advance it grew steadily deeper from 



85 



