Snowbank

“ All the old barns and sheds and display buildings that have been falling to pieces on account of being out of repair make the swellest kind of kindling wood and the flames, helped out by the wind, are leaping high in the air, sucking out for new things to burn. It’s a great sight.
“Some hot!” shouts Rod, backing up. “Say, it’s melting the ice on our slide!”
It is for a fact! The banks of snow are disappearing along the road, too, on account of the heat.
“Old Crabby must have cast a spell over this hill!” says Pete as we all feel a kind of uncanny feeling creep over us. ”

“ Indeed, if you will look closely at the line of the retreating snow—not a straight line but a billowy one, here receding into a big bay, here stubbornly holding out a promontory of white—you will note that the crevellated edge of the vanishing snow mass is not joined to the earth at all, but forms a little overhanging cliff of ice. The melting warmth is coming up from the ground rather than from the sun in the last stage of the snow-field's flight, and underneath this tiny cliff the vegetation can be seen already pushing up to life. ”

“ The lower stretch of a glacier is an unhandsome sight in summer: all sorts of rock débris and ugly black shale, with discolored [Pg 127] melting ice and snow, intersected everywhere with streams of dirty water—this was what it had degenerated into as we reached the pass. The snow was entirely gone from the pass, so the sled was abandoned—left standing upright, with its gee-pole sticking in the air that if any one else ever chanced to want it it might readily be found. The snow-shoes were piled around it, and we resumed our packs and climbed up to the pass. ”

“ When the snow sticks, the snowshoes get wet and heavy and damp snow packs on top and clings to them, and when these troubles come it is best to cut wood, build a good fire and camp by it until evening. Stand the snowshoes up in the snow where the sunshine and the warm wind will dry them, make some tea and eat your lunch, then roll into your blanket and rest until the sun gets low, when you can resume your journey.
It is difficult traveling, at the best, and the strength of the traveler is heavily taxed. Always he has the heavy pack and the snowshoe trail seems endless. ”

“ All summer these intrepid men on their sturdy horses go about armed with revolvers. But in the fall—snow begins early in September, sometimes even in August—they take to snowshoes. With a carbine strung to his shoulders, matches in a waterproof case, snowshoes and a package of food in his pocket, the Glacier Park ranger covers unnumbered miles, patrolling the wildest and most storm-ridden country in America. He travels alone. The imprint of a strange snowshoe on the trail rouses his suspicion. Single-handed he follows the marks in the snow. ”

“ Every uncrevassed side glacier above the snowline pours out a similar river on to the surface of the main glacier, and these rivers in their turns presently join the trunk stream. Thus, whatever route you take, whether you keep near the trunk stream or far from it, the side streams have to be crossed. The crossing of them is often a tough business. Their icebanks are about twelve feet high and usually vertical; their volume of water is too considerable to be waded, seeing that their beds are of smooth, slippery, blue ice, on which footing cannot be maintained for a moment. ”

“ The current is so swift that many stretches run open water far into the winter, and blow-holes are numerous. There is little travel on the Flats in winter, and a snow-storm accompanied by wind may obliterate what trail there is in an hour. The vehicle used in the Flats is not a sled but a toboggan, and our first mistake was in not conforming to local usage in this respect. There is always a very good reason for local usage about snow vehicles. ”

“ At least, David did that while Nell unlashed the load and got out the sleeping bags, the bacon and frying-pan, and big, thick stockings to change into in case their feet were damp--which always was the case, and might mean frost-bite or, at least, serious chill, unless attended to.
They regularly walled themselves in from the forest. On one side was the rock wall, on the other the sled turned up on its side, and so making rather a good barrier in between the snow scraped up into a high fence, while the fourth side was open to the river--their icy, snow-covered road. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They were adrift on a cake of ice. Wind from the northeast was blowing a hurricane, carrying them on their ice cake directly out to sea; but the snow was drifting in hummocks, and in one of them the natives began digging a hole for a hut. When this was of sufficient size, they pitched a sled cover of canvas over it, made the sleighs fast outside, and crawled underneath. Once inside their temporary igloo, they made a fire of white drilling and bacon, taken from the sled loads of merchandise; melted snow for water, and boiled coffee, being nearly famished. ”

“ A floor-cloth of light Willesden canvas covered the surface of snow or ice in the interior of the tent; performing when sledging the alternative office of a sail.
In order to cut snow, neve or ice to pile on the flounce, a pick and spade had to be included in the sledging equip meet. As a rule, a strong, pointed shovel weighing about six pounds answers very well; but in Adelie Land, the surface was so often wind-swept ice, polished porcelain-snow, or hard neve that a pick was necessary to make any impression upon it. ”

“ The sledges seemed to grow heavier and more resistant every hour. One of them, of which the runners were not shod with metal, came to grief at a stream-gully, where it pitched on its nose and smashed a runner. At last the water was left behind and dry ice gained. At the foot of a long, downward slope we found a big, frozen lake that had not yet burst the bonds imposed on it by the previous winter; crossing its rough surface, we climbed on to the moraine beyond, at the foot of the side glacier now to be ascended. ”

“ Soon, however, the snow-covered belt of the glacier will be reached, and as at this time of year a slight but continuous thaw is proceeding, it necessarily follows that, where there are no crevasses to drain off the water, there will be a wild belt covered with water-logged snow and intersected by wide and rushing streams which it is often very difficult to cross. The water-logged snow is merely unpleasant and laborious, as the ski and the sledge will sink into it, and every hollow thus made is instantly filled with ice-cold water. ”

“ If the snowfall is followed by cold weather, not much harm is done, for the snow is removed by shovels and barrows, and a sprinkle of water over the whole rink—sprinklings being made at night, since a sprinkle freezes almost as it falls, opposed to the slower habits of a flood—shows next day that the rink is no whit the worse. But if a thaw follows a snowfall, the general laws of nature are{29} suspended, in order to thwart icemen and skaters. Theoretically, the surface of the ice below the melting snow will thaw evenly. ”

“ In the northern and western coast provinces, where the snow falls to the depth of many feet and remains long on the ground, it forms the material of the children's playthings, and the theatre of many of their sports. Besides sliding on the ice, coasting with sleds, building snow-forts and fighting mimic battles with snow-balls, they make many kinds of images and imitations of what they see and know. In America the boy's snow-man is a Paddy with a damaged hat, clay pipe in mouth, and the shillelah in his hand. ”

“ Marvellous, too, are the dealings of the frost with the running streams and the lakes such as those at St. Moritz or Davos or{18} Sils. Often, unfortunately, it happens that a snowfall will occur when they are but lightly frozen over, in which case the snow quite covers them, breaks through perhaps in places, and with the ice already formed, makes a rough uneven surface useless to the skater, and to the beholder no more than a level snow-field, with perhaps ugly stains on it where the water has come through and formed the grey ice, which is of no artistic moment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What idle, lilting verse can tell Of giant fluted towers, O'er-canopied with immemorial snow And riven by a glacier's azure flow?
As we neared Horn Bluff, on the first stage of our homeward march, the upper layers of snow were observed to disappear, and the underlying ice became thinner; in corrugated sapphire plains with blue reaches of sparkling water. Cracks bridged with flimsy snow continually let one through into the water. McLean and I both soaked our feet and once I was immersed to the thighs, having to stop and put on dry socks and finnesko. ”

“ About them the snow was crusted, and the crust was punctured with many pits where fragments of the ice from the berg had fallen, and with other pits where the seven dogs of the pack had pitched headlong. One by one the gray runners crawled to the surface and emerged like rats from their holes to sprawl upon the snow crust, looking exceedingly foolish, as is the manner of dignified dogs when they are spilled promiscuously into such a predicament.
A little way from where the man and woman stood the sledge was upended in the drift. ”

“ When the snowshoe was pressed into the snow, its nose was confronted by a vertical wall of snow twelve inches high. If the foot, in rising, slanted forward the slightest bit, the nose of the shoe penetrated the obstructing wall and tipped downward till the heel of the shoe struck the man's leg behind. Thus up, straight up, twelve inches, each foot must be raised every time and all the time, ere the forward swing from the knee could begin.
On this partially packed surface followed the dogs, the man at the gee-pole, and the sled. ”

“ After a while I noticed a series of lofty snow tunnels over the raging stream, which is earlier in the season covered entirely by a vault of ice and snow. The higher I got the harder and more slippery grew the snow. The soles of my shoes having become soaked and frozen made walking very difficult. At 12,000 feet, being about three hundred feet above the stream, I had to cross a particularly extensive snow-field, hard frozen and rising at a very steep angle. Some of my coolies had gone ahead, the others were behind. ”

“ Dirt-stained lines curved across the snow-bank from side to side, and when I observed that these curved lines coincided with the curved moraine and that the stones and dirt were most abundant near the bottom of the bank, I shouted, “A living glacier.” These bent dirt lines show that the ice is flowing in its different parts with unequal velocity, and these embedded stones are journeying down to be built into the moraine, and they gradually become more abundant as they approach the moraine because there the motion is slower. ”

“ Yet we see big stacks of firewood piled near each farmhouse door; we see the cabin newly banked with earth against the frost; at blacksmith’s shop we see men hammering on well-used sled; alongside the road, awaiting the winter’s need, lies an upturned snowplow newly ironed; everywhere men are making ready for the cold. In a fortnight the highway across the Haukeli Fjeld will be blocked with new-fallen snow. In a month the jingling bells of sleighs and sledges will sound along the now verdant valley of the Baegna Elv. ”

“ They had threaded up into the region where spring was further advanced, and within half an hour encountered another overflow. Climbing the steep bank, they wallowed through thickets waist-deep in snow. Beneath the crust, which cut knifelike, it was wet and soggy, so they emerged saturated. Then debouching on to the glare ice the boy had a nasty fall, for he slipped, and his loose-hung pack flung him suddenly. Nothing is more wicked than a pack on smooth ice. ”

“ Do you know that this is the first real snow storm I have ever seen?”
“Is that so?” queried Fred in astonishment. “We see so much of it every year that it gets to be an old story with us.”
“You’ve got an awful lot of fun coming to you,” put in Sparrow. “There’s skating and ice sailing and coasting and snowballing and lots of things.”
“Not forgetting muskratting and fishing through the ice,” added Fred. “Maybe we didn’t have a lot of fun the winter we spent up in Snowtop Camp, eh, fellows?” ”

“ They now came to the snow arch, which is formed every June under the head wall, and sometimes lasts as late as August. The winter storms, from the northwest, blow the snow over Bigelow Lawn above, and pack it down into Tuckerman’s Ravine, in a huge drift two hundred feet deep. This drift gradually melts down, packs into something pretty close to ice, and the water trickling from the cliff behind joins into a brook beneath it and hollows out an arch. ”