May, 1904 1 
THK CONDOR 
71 
gales of wind, a veritable blizzard, the light powdery crystals driving into every 
crack and cranny, piling behind obstructions in huge drifts, ten, twenty, fifty feet 
deep. By April the heavy storms have passed; the snow rapidly settles so that 
one may walk upon the crust, and from now' on the snow melts quickly. The 
weather during the winter is not bitterl}' cold, the temperature rarely drops to 
zero and then only on clear nights; but as a rule there is frost every night. 
The traveler through these vast w'astes of snow is impressed with the utter 
silence and .solitude. All the familiar scenes of summer are gone. The roads and 
the trails are blotted out; the houses are eave-deep or entirely covered; the alpine 
lake is a flat white plain; the w'aterfalls are mute, mere trickling driblets over ice- 
sheeted precipices, and all the varied and abundant animal life of summer has dis- 
appeared. No marmot or lagomys calls shrilly from the rock piles, no chipmunk 
chatters as you pa.ss; there is no whistle of the quail, no song of warbler or tlirush. 
One may hear the rattle of a woodpecker, the cry of a blue-fronted jay, or the lisp- 
ing notes of a mountain chickadee, but even these are uncommon. 
During the past four or five years I have made several short winter excursions 
LAKE OF THE WOODS AND PYRAMID PEAK 
into the high mountains both at Summit Station and at Glen Alpine, at elevations 
from six to ten thousand feet. Traveling here is done entirely on the Norwegian 
skee for the snow averages from ten to tw'enty feet deep on the level. 
These skees are thin strips of wood three or four inches wide and from six to 
ten feet long with an upcurve at the front end. They are used exclusively by the 
dwellers along the railroad and at the scattered resorts, in preference to the racket- 
shaped Canadian snow-shoe. Without these one would often sink waist deep in 
the soft, powdery snow. 
The usual way of reaching the Glen Alpine region is by railroad to Truckee, 
thence on skees sixteen miles to Lake Tahoe w'here a little mail steamer tw’ice a 
week makes the circuit of the lake. Leaving the boat at Tallac at the .south end 
of the lake we use the skees once more to make the seven miles to Glen Alpine 
where food and shelter may be had from the watchman at the resort. From here 
it is four miles to Mt. Tallac and six miles to Pyramid Peak, each mountain being 
about ten thousand feet altitude. 
A complete list of the birds is not attempted; only those .species which appear 
