POWER OF AN AVALANCHE.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5026, 20 February 1885, Page 3

POWER OF AN AVALANCHE.

Tbe Dcnrcr (Col.) News soys i—Ono t ot the grandest, snow-slides that ever occurred in Colorado took place a hw 'days ago, just back of the Upper Twin Lakes. Judge Harlan, aa eye-witness, says it was the most sublime sight he ever witnessed. Just back of Twin Lukes are Pomeroy, Gordon, and Francis gulches, on each side of which the mountains rise thousands of feet. Tbe sides of these fliants of the Eockies had been covered duribjr the heavy and protracted storms with an enormous depth of snow until the weight had become such that it could be •attained no longer. The Judge says that, U it happened, be was standing where he could see the aralanche perfectly. All at once his eara were greeted with a low, rumbling sound that seemed like the roar of a distant storm, and almost simultaneously an immense volume, of snow began to more down tho mountain side in one of the gulches towards the road. The agi tation seemed to break loose the enow from its mooring in the other two gulches, and almost before one had time, to think,

hundreds of acres of snow were coming down tbe mountain with a roar like thunder, and filling the air with spray as they tore, through the trees and carried everything, before them. As they de■cended, their velocity increased, until the rapidity with which the great field of snow and debris came down was terrific. The distance, he says, must hare been a mile from where the avalanche started to tbe ralley where it stopped. So deep was the snow that a grove of quaking asp, whose trees were from" 20 to 40 feet high, , was completely buried from sight. Logs a foot and a half in thickness, that lay w tbe way of the slide, were sDopped j;j two like straws ; trees that wer» too ta!! to be covered up were torn up from their rootoa places in the mountain sides and carried like leaves in the avalanche. Ibe velocity of air producrd by the avplaache b»ew down trees that were cleB? outside the track of the slide. Fortuc&tcly no one was ia ifas way, and no lives lost.