Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-08-17
SWEPT BY AN AVALANCHE.
4 Slide of Snow and Rock Which Went
Up Hill.
From the Wide World Magazine.

From the Wide World Magazine.
The tremendous force and strange vaga-
ries of the Alpine avalanches are illustrated
in an article by John Swaffham. The av-
alanche to which particular reference is
made by Swaffham was seen by him in the
valley of the Dischmathal in the Engadine
year ago. The Dischmathal is fairly
broad valley, with well wooded and not
very steep sides. 1t lies, however, between
mountains, on many of which there are
large glaciers, and 1t was from one of
these that the immense mass Of snow which
caused such ruin originally fell. Gathering
impetus as 1t went, the avalanche projected
its thousands Of tons of snow on the pine
woods. through which It cut a road as
clean as though every tree had been felled
flush with the ground by the AK of a mirac-
ulouS woodman.
The chief glacier above the woods is the
famous one called the Scaletta, but 1T was
from a smaller field on the Jatzhorn that
the trouble came. It had been showing for
about a week, and the depth Of new snow
In the valley was about ten or twelve feet,
much more on the high peaks. Next came
a warm spell of true April weather. The
new snow settled, l. e., growing compressed
of its own weight and the softening In
fuence of the sum- You are to remember
that this new snow did not lie upon the
earth, nor yet upon a bare rocky bed It
lay as 1t had fallen, a separate mass super
imposed upon the hard frozen crust of the
last winters falls AS 1t contracted from
above 1t naturally began to expand slightly
on it's unstable base. The movement begun
continued, and the whole mass commenced
to shift. Finally 1t came clean away, leav-
ing cash of over mile long on the side
of the Jatzhorn where it had parted from
the main mass. This cash was upward of
fifteen feet deep, and was plainly visible
miles away from the bottom of the valley.
The fall was on such scale that 1t
swept everything before 1t down the val
ley sides. Acres of pines Of unknown age
went down as easily as skittles and the
giant moved down the valley with roar
heard for miles away, and under cloud
of snow dust SO thick to become a YER
table fog through which nothing could be
seen for many. minutes. For weeks after
every. tree and rock within large radius
was shrouded with a dirty covering of wet
snow mingled with all manner of dust
taken up by the fierce draught of the fall.
is content to roll Its troubled mass down
into the bed of a valley, there to stay until
the sun has effaced It's last relics from the
summer landscape. Not so this one, the
force and weight of which carried 1t right
across the valley SO that it partly mounted
the opposite hillside thing almost unpre-
cedented in the history of avaIanches in
the Alps or anywhere else.
This same impetus and weight acting on
snow already packing under the heat of a
week of spring sun. compressed the moving
masses into consistency little short of
the familiar asphalt. Moreover, the masses
naturally split up, and 1t was the side pres
sure of the latter parts which threw up the
extraordinary beyels or holdings OF snow.
At the same time five successive falls oc-l
Cured from the same mountains on its
other side in the Zuge gorge, which is on
Engadine. The noise OF these joined forces
with that of the Dischmathal and the COM
bined result was very curious. First. there