slippery snowy areas. This anchorage gives 

 the snow a hold until it can compact and freeze 

 fast. Shrubbery thus is preventing the white 

 avalanche! 



A slide once took me with it. I was near the 

 bottom of one snowy arm of a V gulch, waiting 

 to watch Gravity, the world-leveler, take his 

 next fragment of filling to the lowlands. Sepa- 

 rating these arms was a low, tongue-like rock- 

 ledge. A gigantic snow-cornice and a great 

 snow-field filled, with full-heaped and rounded 

 measure, the uppermost parts of the other 

 arm. 



Deep rumblings through the earth, echoings 

 from crags and canons through the communi- 

 cative air, suddenly heralded the triumphant 

 starting of an enormous slide. About three 

 hundred feet up the heights, a broken end-on 

 embankment of rocks and snow, it came coast- 

 ing, dusting into view, plunging towards me. 

 As a rock-ledge separated the two ravines above 

 the junction, I felt secure, and I did not realize 

 until too late that I was to coast down on the 

 slide. Head-on, it rumbled heavily toward me 



91 



