78 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 
hit violently, as the bare space around them 
showed. They were pushing each other, butt- 
ing their heads together, rearing up on their 
hind legs. As I watched them another gust 
came roaring forward; they stopped for a sec- 
ond and then rushed toward it. I caught my 
last glimpse just as it struck them and they 
both leaped high to meet it. 
I was in the heights when a heavy snow came 
down and did not drift. It lay deeply over 
everything except pinnacles and sharp ridges. 
I made a number of snowshoe trips to see how 
sheep met this condition. During the storm one 
flock had stood beneath an overhanging cliff. 
When the snowfall ceased the sheep wallowed to 
the precipitous edge of the plateau and at the 
risk of slipping overboard had travelled along 
an inch or less wide footing for more than a 
mile. Where the summit descended by steep 
slope they ventured out. Steepness and snow 
weight before their arrival, perhaps with the 
assistance of their tramplings, had caused the 
snow at the top to slip. As the slide thus 
started tore to the bottom it scraped a wide 
swath free of snow. In this cleared strip the 
sheep were feeding contentedly. 
Snowslides, large and small, often open 
emergency feeding spaces for sheep. Long 
snowshoe excursions on the Continental Divide 
