SNOW AVALANCHES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 149, 10 March 1876, Page 7

SNOW AVALANCHES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

A Xkvada paper, speaking of the avalanches of snow which have been so destructive of life and property this winter, says : — "The purely sliding avalanches, or snow slides, are such as occur in dry or merely moist snow ; while the rolling avalanches tak<? place when the snow is wet or sufficiently moist to form into balls by rolling. The avalanches that occurred in Virginia City were of the genuine rolling description — the kind most dreaded and most destructive in the valleys of the Alps. A very small beginning, when the snow is in the proper condition, m*y end in a destructive avalanche. A ball of snow no larger than a man's head, started high up on Mount Datidson, might have swept several houses at the foot of the mountains. The fearful force of the avalanche was shown here when one broke into a house and killed two men ; and another demolished two houses and buried five persons, who weic rescued with much difficulty. A further illustration of the terrible force and destructive powers of the avalanche is to be found in tl c fact that twenty-eight Chinamen wore killed by one that fell near Genoa. As we have said, a small ball of snow started high up on the slope of Mount Davidson would result in a genuine avalanche. In rolling a distance of fifty yards in the moist snow, the sin ill ball of snow \\ ould become four or five feet in diameter, when it would burst, and each piece would an instant after form a ball of lar^c size. These in turn would explode as soon as they had acquired a certain weight and velocity ; and a moment after there would be hundreds and thousands of these balls in motion, all bounding down the steep side of the mountain. While hundreds of these are exploding or just forming, other hundreds are of full size and are picking up rocks, dirt, and all manner of rubbish, which becomes involved in the grand downward rush Towards the lower part of their course the balls become so numerous that they bound and clash together so often that they are broken before they acquire any great size, and the whole avalanche is then a plunging, sliding mass of snow. The avalanche which knocked two houses to pieces and lmried five persons, started but a few hundred yards above \\ here the houses stood. It started at a bunch of rocks which projected fifteen or twenty feet above the general surface of the slope of the mountain. On these rocks the snow had fallen and accumulated to the depth of about three feet, hanging in places as snow is seen to do on the eaves of a house. From one of these rocks fell a bunch of snow which began to roll down the hill, and the result was a destructive avalanche. Doubtless the avalanche which killed two men started in much the same way."