CAME WITH A. TERRIBLE ROAR,

Otago Witness, Issue 2308, 26 May 1898, Page 11

CAME WITH A. TERRIBLE ROAR,

It was now near the dying moment of many who clung hopefully to the rope. Half a dozen of the stoutest-hearted men in the party walked ahead to break the trail, sometimes sinking in snow to their waists. " The procession moved slowly down the incline from the Scales to a soon bench at the top of LoDg Hill, aboub two miles above Sheep Camp. Those in ib walked in a thick, swirling twilight, their eyes blinded by the driving snow. They were now on the crest of Long Hill, which trends downwards to Squaw Hill, at the side of which, down in a gulch, lies Stone House, where a fatal slide occurred last year. At the top of Squaw Hiil tbe trail, which lies to the left as one climbs, swings to the right towards a mountain whose peak towers about 1500 ft above the level.

On the bench at the crest of Long Hill the trail is not much more than 200 ft from the mountain's base, and about the centre of the bench there is a cut or gulch on the face of the mountain. Here snow had accumulated so thick as to almost m»ke the mountain side a level slope. It was this snow, its hold on the mountain weakened be the weight ef the recent fall, that swept down in avalanche velocity on the helpless human beings that hung to the long rope cr wandered blindly aboub ia the neighbourhood of tbe obliterated trail. The/c came to them a thundering that sounded far away through the steady roar of the gale, and in an instant engulfed the van and centre of the long file.

. Walter Choppe, of New York, who led the line, came out alive, but is badly injured.

Benjamin Hertzig, of Detroit, Mich., the only man who carried a shovel, brought up the rear, and was buried to his waist where he stood.

Excepting Hertzig, the survivors who were interviewed say they were pushed off their feet by a steady overwhelming force. Over them in places the snow was piled up to a height of from 4ft to 30ffc.

The first man to exhume himself and realise what bad happened was A. F. Smith, of Kansas City, Clifford L. Barge, over whose head some 4-ffc of 6now lay, was dug out by Smith. These three uncovered several others, one of whom set out for Sheep Camp with the news of this, the crowning horror of the day. On his way he met two rescuing parties equipped with shovels, who had been started up the trail by the earlier be«era of the ill tidings from the Scales.