SNOW SLIDES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES. 



341 



seated at dinner one night, we heard an 

 ominous rumble from the top of the moun- 

 tain. 



"There she comes !" said one of the boys. 



We forgot our appetites in an instant 

 and rushed out of the tent. By that time 

 the roar, the grinding, the crashing were 

 tremendous. The earth trembled under 

 our feet and the branches of the trees 

 about us vibrated from the air cur- 

 rents set in motion by the great slide. We 

 could not see from our camp ground the 

 high precipice over which we knew the 

 slide must plunge, and had not time to 

 reach a point whence it could be seen ; 

 but as we stood there, looking in the direc- 

 tion of the fall, we saw great clouds of mist 

 and snow rising through the tree tops. 



"There she goes over the precipice," said 

 Wright, and as the rocks landed again on 

 the cragged walls of the gulch at the foot 

 of the cliff the earth vibrated still more vio- 

 lently. 



A moment later the vast wall of snow 

 and ice swept in sight, within 200 yards of 

 us. It was like a tidal wave on the ocean. 

 It came in an almost perpendicular wall, 

 20 or 30 feet high, with the loose snow 

 curling and foaming over the front of it. 

 This huge white mass moved slowly, ma- 

 jestically, terrifically forward until its front 

 fell on the immediate bank of the creek. 

 Then the rest slowed up and began to 

 spread out. It took several minutes for 

 the last of the moving mountain to get out 

 of the gulch and spread out over the table- 

 land. Occasionally one section, or one line 

 of the snow, having a greater pressure be- 

 hind it than another portion, would cut a 

 channel straight through the body that 

 was moving more slowly, and would be 

 forced to the front, leaving perpendicular 

 walls on both sides of the cut, polished 

 smooth and clean,' to a height of to or 20 

 feet. 



When the snow finally ceased to move it 

 was spread from one side to the other of 

 the terminal moraine, from the big timber 

 on one side to that on the other side. The 

 sight was enough to paralyze a man. We 

 stood speechless in awe of it. We were 

 all thinking of the same thing. That was, 

 what a puny, insignificant creature man is 

 when compared with the great forces of 

 nature. If the New York post office build- 

 ing had stood on that moraine w r hen the 

 slide came down it would have been swept 

 into the creek just as you would sweep 

 away with your hand a house built of 

 cards. If the Brooklyn bridge had been 

 stretched across the right of way of that 

 slide it would have gone down into the 

 creek as easily as the housewife sweeps 

 down a cobweb with her broom. 



If there is anything on this earth that 

 will take the conceit out of a man in 20 



seconds it is to stand on the right of way 

 of one of these snow slides and see the 

 slide coming. 



A few days after this incident I climbed 

 half way up the South wall of the canyon 

 to watch a certain feeding ground for 

 bear. I had been there perhaps an hour 

 when I heard a crash and a roar from the 

 top of the opposite mountain. I looked 

 across and saw another immense slide iust 

 starting from the basin of snow which lay 

 ensconced against the very top crag of the 

 mountain. This basin covers perhaps 20 

 acres and a gulch leads out from the lower 

 side by it. The snow which had been softened 

 by the warm sun was juust leaving the ba- 

 sin and starting on its headlong journey to 

 the bottom of the canyon. It gathered 

 force as it went. It gathered rocks, it 

 gathered trees. The rocks were forced and 

 ground against the walls of the gulch. 

 Trees were tossed hither and thither by the 

 changing currents of snow as a man would 

 toss straws with a pitchfork. This gulch, 

 like the other, winds about more or less 

 in its course, and one of the most interest- 

 ing phases of the exhibition was to see the 

 slide checked when it came to an abrupt 

 turn in the gulch ; but in each case the 

 pressure behind would be rapidly increased 

 until the front of the column of snow 

 would break loose and move on. 



I watched this great convulsion of nature 

 perhaps 3 or 4 minutes. In that time 

 the slide traveled, I should say, nearly a 

 mile, when it emerged from its narrow 

 confines and spread out over the moraine. 

 It split in the middle and 2 great columns 

 of snow went boiling and surging down 

 the opposite sides of the rock pile as if 

 running a race to the creek below. These 

 2 wings finally reached their destination 

 about the same time. Each was 100 to 150 

 feet in width at its terminus and about 500 

 to 600 feet long. The 2 wings were at 

 least 300 feet apart at their lower ends 

 and the snow was anywhere from 20 to 30 

 feet deep all through these 2 great columns. 



The snow in this slide was cleaner than 

 in any of the others we saw during the 

 month we were there. It came from the 

 mountain top to its field at the edge of the 

 forest as nure and white as the day it left 

 the heavens. I walked over these great 

 masses several times during the next 

 few days, and when the sun shone the 

 whiteness and the brilliancy were sim- 

 ply painful. One could not endure it 

 more than a few minutes without smoked 

 glasses. There were many weird and fan- 

 tastic images formed in these blocks of 

 snow. There were single snowballs 10 

 to 20 feet in diameter. One, I re- 

 member, about 6 feet in diameter and 

 about 10 feet high, rolled clear away from 

 the main mass of snow and stood on its 



