Power of an Avalanche.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1985, 28 March 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

Power of an Avalanche.

The Denver (Col ) News says :— One of the grandest snow-slides that ever occurred in Colorado took place a few days ago, just back of the Upper Twin Lakes. Judge Harlan, an eye-witness, says it was tho most aublime sight he ever witnessed. Just back of Twin Lakes are Pomeroy, Gordon, and Francis gulches, on each side of whioh the mountains rise thousands of feet. The Bides of these giants of the Eockies had been covered during the heavy and protracted storms with an enormous depth of snow, until the weight had become such that it could be sustained no longer. The Judge says that, as it happened, he was standing where he could see the avalanche perfectly. All at once his ears were greeted with a low, rumbling sound that seemed like the roar of a distant storm, and almost simultaneously an immense volume of enow began to move down the mountain side in one of the gulches toward the road. The agitation seemed to break loose the snow from its moorings in the other two gulches, and almost before one had time to think, hundreds of acres of snow were coming down the 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 descended, their velocity increased, until the rapidity with which the great field of snow and debris came down wan something territic. The distance, he says, must have been a mile from where the avalanohe started to the valley where it stopped. So deep was the snow that a grove of quaking asp, whose tree 3 were from 20 to 40 feet high, was completely buried from sight. Logs a foot and a half in thickness, that lay in the way of the slide, were snapped in two like straws ; trees that were too tall to be covered up were torn up from their rooted places in the mountain sided and carried like leaves with the avalanche. The velocity of air produced by the avalanche blew down trees that were clear outside of the track of the slide. Fortunately no one was in the way, and no livea were lost.