SNOW SLIDES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES. 



345 



The other 3 men, after being tossed hither 

 and thither, finally escaped with their lives, 

 but all were badly cut, torn and bruised. 



Some people are killed every spring, but 

 this is usually the result of carelessness on 

 their part. Familiarity with danger breeds 

 carelessness on the part of all men. Pack 

 trails cross the paths of the slides. Men 

 go over these trails every day in spring 

 and summer. A man may pass over them 

 a hundred times and not be caught ; so 

 he grows careless. He keeps on going, 

 even after he knows the slide is due to 

 come down. Finally it comes, just when 

 some pack outfit or some prospector is at 

 that point in the trail, and his friends do 

 not see him again for probably 2 or 3 

 months. Every Western man knows it is 

 useless to search for a dead man in one 

 of these great moraines,. You must simply 

 wait for the snow to melt and uncover 

 the body. The friends of the unfortunate 

 watch the gradually melting mass every 

 day for weeks. Finally they find a hand 

 or a foot or a head exposed in an edge 

 of the snow mountain and the body is 

 rescued; but there is no danger of being 

 caught in a slide if people are careful. 



I made a large number of photographs of 

 the avalanches and of the effect of them, 

 some of which are reproduced here, but I 

 have not space for more than a small per- 



centage of them. I have had a series of 

 lantern slides made from the best of these 

 pictures, showing the awful work of these 

 great phenomena, and shall take pleasure 

 in showing them to such of my friends 

 as care to see them. 



It is impossible to get into a photograph 

 10 per cent of the grandeur or the feeling 

 one experiences in playing snow slide in 

 the Selkirks. In the first place, you can- 

 not possibly portray in a photograph the 

 frightful pitch of the mountains. You must 

 tip your camera back to enable the lens to 

 look up the mountain. Thus you get an 

 effect almost like that produced by setting 

 the camera level on the ground and hav- 

 ing it look off over a flat prairie or a 

 long stretch of level road. In nearly all 

 the views reproduced with this article the 

 observer is looking up mountains that are 

 so steep a goat would have great difficulty 

 in climbing them. In some places you are 

 looking up perpendicular walls, where the 

 snow slides drop straight down 100 to 500 

 feet ; but, as I have said, the camera had 

 to be tipped back to get the view, and that 

 takes off the chill. Furthermore, these 

 granite walls are usually J /4 of a mile to a 

 mile away from the point of view, so they 

 dwindle into miniature proportions when 

 viewed through the ground glass. In or- 

 der to get anything like a correct impres- 



7. ANOTHER VIEW OF THE DEBRIS BROUGHT DOWN BY THE SLIDE SHOWN 



IN CUT NQ. 5 f 



