Snow line

“ The summers are cool and their heat does not suffice to completely melt the heavy snow of the preceding winter. On the Alps the SNOW LINE—the lower limit of permanent snow—is drawn at about eight thousand five hundred feet above sea level. Above the snow line on the slopes and crests, where these are not too steep, the snow lies the year round and gathers in valley heads to a depth of hundreds of feet. ”

“ We ascended the nearest hill soon after arriving at the hotel, and, looking across the intervening valley, could count twelve peaks, the lowest of which was over twenty thousand feet in height, and the highest over twenty-eight thousand, upon which rested eleven thousand feet of perpetual snow,—the snow line being distinctly marked from east to west, as far as the eye could reach. There can be no animal life in that Arctic region, no pulsations of vitality. ”

“ Every movement was a work of deliberation. Having by much care, and with some anxiety, made good our descent to the top of the secondary hills, we took our way down one of the steepest banks, and slid forward with great facility in a sitting posture. Towards the foot of the hill, an expanse of snow stretched across the line of descent. This being loose and soft, we entered upon it without fear; but on reaching the middle of it, we came to a surface of solid ice, perhaps a hundred yards across, over which we launched with astonishing velocity, but happily escaped without injury. ”

“ Where the line passes along the steep flank of a mountain, the roofs of these snow-sheds abut against the mountain-side, so that the masses of snow, gliding down from its heights, continue their slide without injury to line, or sheds, or trains. ”

“ It seems as if one might stand on the edge of the snow, and let down a plumb-line against the face of the snow, for some hundreds of feet, and then let it fall for some hundreds of feet more, against the face of the underlying rock. You are able, too, at the same time to see that this is not a mere ridge of snow, but that it is the edge of a vast field of snow on the flat crown of this mountain giant’s head, which only gradually slopes off north, south, and west ”

“ The line of eternal snow which, at the poles, is found on the level of the ground, gradually rises as we approach the torrid zone, where it attains its maximum of elevation, from 13,000 to 17,000 feet. This phenomenon does not exclusively depend upon the geographical latitude, nor on the mean annual temperature of the locality: it is the result of an aggregate of diverse circumstances which we have not the space here to enumerate and discuss. ”

“ The thaw seemed to have ceased and an icy wind got up, moaning dismally in the tree-tops. The river, which had been always rather narrow, widened out within a sort of gorge of rocks and brushwood. The bed of it began to slope slightly in a long series of what would be rapids when the water was flowing, and then, on a turn, they came to the rocky dip of a high waterfall. Frozen it was still, of course. One mass of ice and snow. Rather a terrible place in the strange stillness of its hold-up. And everywhere rocks--rocks and steep, difficult places blending with the forest. ”

“ Yet who shall attempt to draw them forth for another, or write down even a faint suggestion of their beauty for those by whom they have never been beheld? Surely at no time are the great snows endowed with more dignity, more of the impressiveness of visible size, more aspect of aloofness, of belonging to another and a nobler world, than when the full moon shines perfectly upon them. And then, too, how the snow-fields glisten over all their wide expanse, yet with a pale effulgence that does not paralyse the eye! ”

“ After each storm the snow-plough piles it, often above one’s head, on both sides of the roads and sidewalks; we walk between high walls built of blocks and masses of blue-shadowed white.
The brightness is almost too great, through the middle of the day; it is dazzling; but about sunset a curious opaque look falls on the landscape; a flattening, till they are like the hues of old pastels, of all the delicate colors. The country has an appearance of almost infinite space, under the snow, and the wind carves out pure sharp wave-like curves of drift about the fields and hills. ”

“ These sturdy little beasts gallop over the hardened forest track, dragging their wood behind them—for without the aid of snow to level the roads, or ice to enable the peasants to make short cuts across the lakes, little trade could be done. The winter comes as a boon and a blessing to man in those Northern realms; all transport is performed by its aid, sledges travel over snow more easily than wheels over roadless ways, and sukset or ski and snowshoes traverse snow or ice more rapidly than the ordinary summer pedestrian. ”

“ The snow has fallen in thick blankets, it has changed by pressure into firn, and then becomes a river of ice, flowing down into the valleys, gouging out deep ruts and, when they come into the influence of the summer sun, melting into torrents and rushing down, heaping up against obstacles, forming lakes, and then again finding a passage down, ever down, until they mingle with the sea. ”

“ The snow was nearly level with the top of the stone walls, and the wind carrying it diagonally from the road, it rolled over the little ridge of stones which remained above the drifts, and then swept across the field, down a long descent, like a feather before the gale. ”

“ You see, Miss Tremont, we don't have the awful low temperatures early in the winter they get further east and north. We're on the wet side of the mountains. But we do get the snow, week after week of it when you simply can't travel, and plenty of thirty and forty, sometimes more, below zero. But the river will freeze if we give it time. And the snow will pack and crust late in the winter. And then, in those clear, cold days, we can make a sled and mush out. ”

“ Look out upon that expanse of snow."—The train was tearing down through the Des Moines valley now—"That is snow, real snow, no tremendous, swirling, threatening drifts, no dead expanse with bare, bleak spots, but instead, a great soft mantle, protecting the germs of the coming crops and the ally, not the enemy of man. How white it is, as it has a right to be. It means well. It is cold, but it is second cousin to the seeds and to our own kind of spring. It is well connected." ”

“ The wind plays strange pranks with snow; snow is the most plastic medium it has to mould into images and symbols of its moods. Here one of these promontories would slope down, and the very next one would slope upward as it advanced across the open space. In every case there had been two walls, as it were, of furious blow, and between the two a lane of comparative calm, caused by the shelter of a clump of brush or weeds, in which the snow had taken refuge from the wind’s rough and savage play. ”

“ A sharp north wind shook the bare branches of the trees that grew thick on both sides of the way, blew the snow in the ravines, and heaped it to huge snow-drifts, which threatened the traveller unacquainted with the locality with danger.
The wind grew every moment more sharp and cutting, the snow deeper, and the difficulty greater for the tired horses to draw their weary load. ”

“ From it my eye began to slip over to the snow expanse. The road was wide, lined with brush along the fence to the left. The fields beyond had no very large open areas—windbreaks had everywhere been spared out when the primeval forest had first been broken into by the early settlers. So whatever the force of the wind might be, no high drift layer could form. But still the snow drifted. There was enough coming down from above to supply material even on such a narrow strip as a road allowance. ”

“ Were this constant movement to cease, the result would be the formation of a sheet of ice of the [5] uniform thickness of about eight feet over the whole Polar region.
13. A layer of snow, which, like the ice itself, is at a minimum in autumn, covers the whole surface of all the ice-fields. This snow, which in winter is sometimes as hard as a rock, sometimes as fine as dust, takes, towards the end of summer, more and more the character of the glacier snow of our lofty Alpine ranges. Its grains, in a humid state, exceed the size of beans, and when in motion they make a rustling noise like sand. ”

“ Few trails survive a fall of six inches of snow, even in a wide, windless forest. Yet a bear track made in loose snow, or a fox track, say, made in wet snow, will remain weeks and even months. The new snow, however, is a new page which is soon filled with natural history.
When one has learned to know the fresh trail of one animal, say that of a mink or fox, a far stride toward reading the snow has been taken. If one takes that trail and follows its wanderings for even an hour, the delight of discovery will quicken the observer. ”

“ The snow is driven like sand upon a level beach, lifted up in long curve lines, and then obscuring the atmosphere with a white darkness. The wind, too, is howling in a shrill minor, singing across the hummock ridges. ”

“ They are in bloom now and the berries will ripen in time.
The snowfall last winter on the summit was one hundred and nine feet. Miles of snowsheds are built over the road and men are kept constantly at work keeping the tracks clear of snow and bowlders. Five huge snow-plows are required, all working constantly to keep the sixty-six highest miles clear. The fall of snow for one day is often four feet. The Great Northern road is putting a tunnel through the mountains now, and will thus do away with the Switch Back. Eight thousand men work in the shafts night and day. ”

“ These plows are wooden frames, shaped somewhat like the bow of a ship—in fact, I have seen very fair clipper models among them—about fifteen feet long by ten feet wide at the base, and so light that, if the snow is not too deep, one horse can manage them. The farmers along the road are obliged to turn out at six o'clock in the morning whenever the snow falls or drifts, and open a passage for travellers. Thus, in spite of the rigorous winter, communication is never interrupted, and the snow-road, at last, from frequent plowing, becomes the finest sleighing track in the world. ”

“ Here, if snow has fallen, as sometimes happens, while wind is blowing, it is driven into all manner of curving wave crests and undulations; then when the fall is over, the sky clears again, a night of frost hardens and congeals the outlines, and the trees wear fine feathers and{17} plumes of whiteness. As the snowfall packs with its own weight, there grows on the surface of the fields a crust half snow, half ice, covered with dazzling minute crystals. ”

“ Housed and windowpaned from it, the greatest wonder to little children is the snow. To men, it is something like a crucible in which their world melts into a white star ten million miles away. The man who can stand the test is a Snow Man; and this is his reading by Fahrenheit, Réaumur, or Moses’s carven tablets of stone.
Night had fluttered a sable pinion above the cañon of Big Lost River, and I urged my horse toward the Bay Horse Ranch because the snow was deepening. ”

“ In this we may be assisted by the circumstance, that, although, generally ten feet in depth, the snow has been thrown off by the thick and spreading branches of the trees, and from round the trunk: the warmth of the trunk itself, acquired by the reflexion of the sun, or communicated by natural heat of the earth, which is never frozen under these masses, has dissolved the snow so much, that immediately at the roots, its depth is not more than one or two feet. ”

“ A snowstorm whitens all the country round and every roof has a coating of snow some six inches thick. The snow gets bound together and remains a more or less solid covering on the roof, till one day it slips off from various causes in irregular pieces, all about six inches thick and perhaps several feet across, and crashes down on the roadway beneath. But if the eaves of the roof dipped into water at that level, then this great sheet of icy snow would, when slipping from the roof, float off on the surface of the water. ”

“ Every artist who has been a traveller, has always remarked the beauty of snow-landscapes in those regions which are, as it were, their favorite haunts. In the south, the snow is never seen in all its glory; it is only in exceptional localities, and on rare days, when it resists the sunshine, that we can form any idea of the splendor of its hues in other regions, and of the peculiar transparency of the shadows that float over its white masses. Christian was seized with enthusiasm. ”

“ He looked all about among the trees most carefully, listened, kwit-kwitted in a low voice to himself, then, with a sudden plunge, swooped downward head-first into the snow. I stole to the spot where he had disappeared, noted the direction of his tunnel, and fell forward with arms outstretched, thinking perhaps to catch him under me and examine his feet to see how his natural snowshoes (Nature's winter gift to every grouse) were developing, before letting him go again. ”

“ In shaded places of the valley you may walk through larches and leafless alder thickets by silent farms, all silvered over with hoar spangles—fairy forests, where the flowers and foliage are rime. The streams are flowing half-frozen over rocks sheeted with opaque green ice. Here it is strange to watch the swirl of water freeing itself from these frost-shackles, and to see it eddying beneath the overhanging eaves of frailest crystal-frosted snow. ”