Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1899-02-09
RUNNING THE AVALANCHE.

LII DyIoh AOiiy AuhoihS, Ptti y, ehUt
fingered unusually late in the denuded
region above Lake Tahoe, was
Ross Kelly, Byron Kelly's son,
lad of fifteen, who went badly astray
one forenoon in trying to cut across
the hills and reach camp, after long
hunt.
He wore skees. The travelling was
very difficult because of the forest
wreckage left by lumbermen, and
Ross was very tired and much dis
couraged when finally he came out on
the side of shaggy mountain, and
stared about him in hopes to get his
bearings. Above him, piercing the
clouds, the mountain lifted vast
white wall of light snow, the
very sight of which gave the boy
q sense of uneasiness.
There was an abandoned umbering
camp on the slope. The roofs of some
of the huts were crushed in by snow.
Near the doorway of one hut was one
of the peculiar log wagons common to
the Sierras, and beyond this wagon
showed the upper end of a long slide,
or larg" sloping, wooden trough,
which Vas strengthened by bands of
iron. 1t dipped down the mountain
at an angle of nearly thirty degrees.
Ross noticed that the slide, at place
far beneath him, spanned small val
ley at whose bottom lays canyon; and
it ended, of course, at the river, now
frozen over, nearly mile below.
Ross had seated himself near the
head of the slide on log for few
minutes rest, and was wondering how
he was ever to rejoin his fathers
party, when his attention was caught
by something going on high up the
side of the mountain, where the flaky
wall of snow seemed heaviest. He
noticed that the wind, which was not
felt by him, was lifting the snow and
pouring it in white cataract over the
brow of n snowy cliff.
The youth, putting off his skees,
watched this for some time with lazy
curiosity, not thinking 1t meant peril
for him. He observed the little hill
made by the snow blown over the
crest grow larger and larger. Then
to the right and to the left of the cata-
ract snowy cascades began to play,
piling up whole range of little hills,
while the big one in the centre con-
tinued to increase in size with aston
ishing rapidity.
Suddenly trembling seemed to
run through the mountain, and
signing sound came down from the
heights. If there had been pines Oh
the slope Ross would have thought
the sound that OF wind soughing
through their tops, but on that sky
reaching expanse there was not a tree.
Then the hills, the cataract and the
cascades appeared to leap together in
and downward with a jarring, grum-
bling roar.
Although Ross Kelly had never
seen a snowslide, he knew now what
it was as we'll as if he had witnessed
hundreds.
The top of the mountain appeared
suddenly to have forsaken its place in
a wild dive for the canyon and the
river. A sense of deepest terror
gripped the boys heart, stilling it,
holding him for moment rigid in
his place, with lips apart and cheeks
blanching. Flight seemed impossible.
He was sure that in another minute
he should be overwhelmed and buried
beneath the snow, so deep that the suns
of hundred years could not resurrect
him.
Nevertheless, after that first shock
of heartstilling fear he started up,
took hurried step, caught up one Of
his skees and scrambled on across the
logs with frantic haste to the top of
the slide, with some idea that he
might shoot down on his back with the
skee under him; but he found himself
jerked outward and downward sud-
denly, for he had stepped on a log
which had lain with more than half
its length in the log slide, and his
movement and weight had tipped it
and set it in motion. 1t ground icily
on the snow for moment, then away
it went with lurch that almost threw
him off.
Impelled by fear, and with thoughts
too chaotic to be called reflections,
Ross dropped down on the log and
clasped it's huge girth with his arms
and legs. Unthinkingly or mechani-
cally he had placed his skee under his
breast, and crosswise of the log, so
that it somewhat resembles balanc-
ing-pole.
The roar of the avalanche was now
more than a roar; it was involved
with whistling shrek, with wall
like wind blowing through network
of wires, with swapping, crashing
and rending, AS tall stumps and
meshed bon chs torn from their places