Boy Scouts in Glacier Park

by Walter Prichard Eaton

  CHAPTER XXVII--The Ranger and the Boys Get a Ride Down the Mountainon a Snow Avalanche, and Don't Look for Another

  The following day the storm was still raging, and it kept it up tillnight, too. The drifts were piled half-way up the windows, shutting outtheir light, the rear door, leading to the stable, was completelybarricaded by a drift, and they had to make periodic sallies with ashovel out of the front door, which opened on a veranda four feet aboveground level, to keep that clear. It was too bitter cold, the wind toopenetrating, to invite further expeditions. Even clearing the veranda infront of the door was a job they quarreled over, and finally had toassign at intervals of one hour, each person taking his turn while theother two peered out of the window to see if he did a thorough job.

  But they had plenty of dry wood inside, and the accumulated newspapersof two months to read, so the day didn't drag, after all.

  "And," said the Ranger, "about to-morrow, or next day, the slides willstart, the real slides, this time. That'll be something worth coming outhere for. There is so much of this snow that the steep places can't holdit all, and the first sun will send it down."

  That night, toward morning, Joe was awakened by a sound like thunder,and sat up in his sleeping-bag, astonished.

  "What's a thunder-storm doing in December?" he thought.

  There was no lightning, however, and he could see outside the brilliantstarlight.

  "Slides!" he suddenly remembered. And as soon as it was light, he wasup, getting breakfast. Breakfast over, he and Tom lost no time ingetting on their snow-shoes and hurrying out, free of the woods, on thewhite surface of the frozen lake, with no less than eight feet of snowunder them. The sun was now up over the prairie, and sending its rays upthe Swift Current Valley and hitting the snow-covered peaks till theyglistened rosy. And all around, from the steep walls of Gould, six milesaway, to the upper precipices of the two mountains hemming in the lakeover their heads, the snowslides were leaping and booming with a noiselike soft thunder. It was a wonderful sight. You had no idea where orwhen one was going to start. A steep precipice, covered with snow, wouldsuddenly show signs of life, the snow high up would start slipping, andas the mass descended it would grow in volume, sweeping the slopebeneath it and sending up a comet's tail of snow-dust, till it ran outwith a boom and a roar upon the less steep slopes below. All around theslides were running, and the steep places seemed fairly to smoke withthe comet tails of snow-dust.

  "Of course," said Mills, when he was ready to set out, "these slides noware just top snow, the latest fall sliding off the very steep places,and doing little or no harm. In spring the bad ones come, when the wholewinter mass, and all the ice and rocks it has gathered up, come down.Then, once in a great while, a third kind will descend--the accumulatedsnow and ice and rock dust of maybe half a century or more. That kindalways chooses a place where there hasn't been a slide before, wipes outforests as it comes, and sometimes houses and people in the valleys. Theslides to-day all follow regular channels. I know where there'llprobably be a good one."

  He led the way up toward the Divide, by a side tributary of the SwiftCurrent. They climbed steadily a long way up toward the steep head wall,leaving the deep brook bed at the danger point, and working on the sideslope above it. Finally they reached a point where they were almostunder the steep wall, and separated from the brook channel by a mass ofrock. Here they waited. They had not long to wait. Suddenly, without anywarning, the snow almost above them started slipping, and in a fewseconds was coming down the brook bed at a tremendous rate, pushing allthe last snowfall and some of the old ahead of it as it came. By thetime it reached the point just below Mills and the two scouts, it wasapparently going thirty miles an hour, with a head about forty feethigh, the whole mass maybe fifty or a hundred feet wide and two hundredfeet long, and churning, foaming, falling over and over itself with agreat, booming roar and sending out a perfect gale of snow-dust.

  As it rushed past, the noise was so great that no one heard a lesserroar behind him. Without any warning, a smaller slide had started justabove the three observers, no doubt caused by the jar and shock of thefirst, and suddenly the snow boiled up under their feet, they werelaunched downward on this second slide, and found themselves on the tailend of the big one.

  Then followed the wildest ride any of them had ever had, or ever wantedto have.

  Of course, it was only their wide western snow-shoes that saved theirlives. In a second, they were on the tail of the big slide, riding ontop of fifty feet of boiling, churning, racing snow, that was by thistime going down-hill at close to a mile a minute. If you have ever runlogs on a river, you know what a slippery job that is. But imagine thelogs leaping up and down as well as rolling around, and traveling a milea minute down-hill into the bargain, and finally casting up a deluge ofpowdered snow-dust into your face, and you will have some idea of thejob that confronted Mills and Tom and Joe.

  No one dared look at the others. No one could speak, or make himselfheard six inches from his mouth if he did open it. Each of them lookedat his own feet, or tried to through the blinding snow powder, and justtrod snow desperately, to keep upright. To fall down meant to be churnedin under the boiling mass, and probably suffocated, or crushed to death.

  After about one minute that seemed like an hour, the slide had descendedto less steep ground. Here it hit a little pine wood, and Joe just couldsee, through the flying snow, the trees go crashing down in front, andthose on either side (their tops level with his feet!) bow and bend inthe wind made by the rushing slide. A second later a tree came boilingup out of the snow right under his feet--or a log, rather, for all itsbranches were stripped off. He jumped madly to avoid it, and it missedhim only by a hair's breadth.

  Beyond the wood, the slide ran out into an open park, went up theincline on the further side by its own momentum, and there spread itselfout and came to rest.

  Joe wiped the snow-dust from his eyes and looked to see what had becomeof Tom and the Ranger. He was still on his feet, but they were not. Thefinal slump of the slide, with the tail end on which they rodetelescoping over the centre, had flung them down and half buried them.For some reason Joe had been able to keep his feet. He sprang to helpthem up, crying, "Are you hurt?"

  They both rose, dazed, and wiped their faces.

  "I--I dunno!" Tom said. "I haven't had time to find out!"

  The Ranger was red with rage.

  "It had no business to start there!" he exclaimed. "We ought to havebeen in a safe place. Teaches me a lesson--you can't bank on slides anytime o' year. That drift above where we stood is always anchored tillspring."

  "Well, I guess it's lucky we're alive!" Joe exclaimed. "Wow! that wassome ride! I never was kept so busy in my life!"

  "And I never want to be again," Mills said. "Boys, had enough slides forto-day? Seen how they work?"

  "I sure have!" both exclaimed, in one breath.

  "Let's go home. What I'd like to see now is a Chinook wind, to take someof this snow away. There's too much of it."

  "Do Chinook winds come before spring?" Joe asked. He had heard of thedry, warm wind which comes over the ranges, from the warm Pacificcurrent, raising the temperature sometimes sixty degrees in as manyminutes, and evaporating the snow like magic.

  "Sometimes," Mills said. "And we need it now, or all the animals willstarve."

  They were all too weary and even a bit shaky after that terrific ride,to do much more that day. Mills did go over to try his telephone, whichhe found the storm had put out of commission again, and then they sataround the cabin and talked over the two minute excitement, which hadseemed, while it lasted, nearer two hours.

  For supper that night Joe got out a can of lobster he found in thestoreroom. He thought it would be a special treat, and it was to Mills,but Tom didn't like lobster, and Joe himself didn't care much for it,either, when he came to taste it. So Mills ate it all.

  "Came near death this morning--might as well risk my life againto-night," he laughed.