The Leavenworth echo. [volume] (Leavenworth, Wash.) 1904-current, 1907-01-25
SNOW SLIDES
No Trains from Seattle for n Week.
Tie-Up Complete

The warm spell following the cold
weather began on Thursday night, jan
uary 18th, and the following day new
source of trouble began to interfere
with the operation of trains on the
Great Northern railway, at least with
that portion of the road lying in the
Cascade mountains between here and
Seattle. From this point to Madison
on the west side OF the range, distance
of some hfty-five miles, there is oppor-
tunity for the development of snow
slides under weather conditions such
as have prevailed for the past week.
The first and second sections OF train
No. l that passed thru here last Satur-
day evening was fairly hit by one on
the west slope not far this side OF Mad
ison, and the smoking car knocked from
the track. Fortunately no one was in
jured seriously, but several received
bruises. A rotary snow pillow was sent
out from Skykomish to the relief of the
train, but before it reached the train
was itself hit and almost buried in
snow slide. 1t took gang of men ten
hours to dig out the snow pillow, and be-
fore it was cleared slides began to come
down the mountain sides so thick and
fast that it was impossible to keep the
track clear. One man reported that
there were twenty-seven between Leav-
enworth and the tunnel, distance of
80 miles.
On Saturday last two trains that
come as far as Leavenworth were sent
back to Spokane to be sent over the
Northern Pacific. Since then until
last night all trains have been sent over
the Northern Pacific. Yesterday it
was reported that the road would be
cleared by 2 o'clock, but by 3 O'Clock
four passenger trains were sidetracked
here. Not until z p. m. did the last
| train get out, shortly before which
time the first train from the west in
eight days reached this place. Yester-
day while men were engaged in clear
ing out one slide two or three new ones
would come down, some times on one
side of them and then again on the
other. If the warm weather continues,
it may and undoubtedly will be an
other week before the danger from
snow slides entirely disappears. When
the slide is entirely of snow the diff
Guilty of clearing the track is not 30
great as in that case the work can US
ually be done with the powerful rotary
snow pillow. But when, as often occurs,
there is mixed with snow thousands of
tons of rock, many OF them very large.
| the difficulty of clearing the track is
doubled and trebled, as the snow pillow
| is of no use in rock and the problem
becomes one for men with picks and
shovels to deal with. Slides vary in
depth and width from few feet to a
width OF two or three hundred feet and
depth of ten to twenty feet A big
slide coming down the mountain side
will take rock, trees and everything
else in front of it, making noise that
can be heard for miles and cause the
earth to tremble. A few years ago a
man who was up in the Icicle canyon
saw a very large one coming down the
side of the mountain not half mile
away. 1t moved along majestically,
not very fast, but taking everything
before it with almost deafening noise.
At this point the valley was not very
wide and the mass of snow, ice, rocks
and trees, some forty or fifty feet in
depth, went across the river, and 80
great was the pushing weight behind
this mass that the front end of the
slime after crossing the river was push
ed up the mountain on the opposite
side for considerable distance. For
short time the river was damned up,
but it takes something with greater re-
sisting power than snow and ice to stop
the lcicle for long, and it soon cut for
itself channel through the barrier.
Snow slides always occur in the
spring of the year when the first few
warm days occur. Tho they may occur
any time during the winter, when a
heavy fall of snow is followed by two or
three warm sunshiny days.