came over the range, the silent forest vistas
became magnificent with bright lights and deep shadows. At timber-line
the bald rounded summit of the range, like a gigantic white turtle,
rose a thousand feet above me. The slope was steep and very icy; a
gusty wind whirled me about. Climbing to the top would be like going
up a steep ice-covered house-roof. It would be a dangerous and barely
possible undertaking. But as I did not have courage enough to
retreat, I threw off my snowshoes and started up. I cut a place in the
ice for every step. There was nothing to hold to, and a slip meant a
fatal slide.

With rushes from every quarter, the wind did its best to freeze or
overturn me. My ears froze, and my fingers grew so cold that they
could hardly hold the ice-axe. But after an hour of constant peril and
ever-increasing exhaustion, I got above the last ice and stood upon
the snow. The snow was solidly packed, and, leaving my snowshoes
strapped across my shoulders, I went scrambling up. Near the top of
the range a ledge of granite cropped out through the snow, and toward
this I hurried. Before making a final spurt to the ledge, I paused to
breathe. As I stopped, I was startled by sounds like the creaking of
wheels on a cold, snowy street. The snow beneath me was slipping! I
had started a snow-slide.

Almost instantly the slide started down the slope with me on it. The
direction in which it was going and the speed it was making would in
a few seconds carry it down two thousand feet of slope, where it would
leap over a precipice into the woods. I was on the very upper edge of
the snow that had started, and this was the tail-end of the slide. I
tried to stand up in the rushing snow, but its speed knocked my feet
from under me, and in an instant I was rolled beneath the surface.
Beneath the snow, I went tumbling on with it for what seemed like a
long time, but I know, of course, that it was for only a second or
two; then my feet struck against something solid. I was instantly
flung to the surface again, where I either was spilled off, or else
fell through, the end of the slide, and came to a stop on the scraped
and frozen ground, out of the grasp of the terrible snow.

I leaped to my feet and saw the slide sweep on in most impressive
magnificence. At the front end of the slide the snow piled higher
and higher, while following in its wake were splendid streamers and
scrolls of snow-dust. I lost no time in getting to the top, a