318 GAMES AND PASTIMES

But looking down the slope to the west everything was

white. From afew hundred feet below where I was standing
and westward for one hundred miles, snow lay deep over
everything; forests, mountains, and valleys were all in
white. It frequently happens that while one mountainous
region is very wintry, another locality on the opposite
side of the same mountains may be having mild weather.
These conditions are often found along opposite sides
of the Continental Divide; occasionally there is a storm on
the eastern side and not on the western, and sometimes it is
cold on the western side while there is warm sunshine on
the eastern.
I stood looking westward at this steep, snowy slope
down the very roof of the world. What a place to coast!
I at once wished for a dozen other boys to try it with me.
This would be the place for speed—steep places with long
plunges—great rushes through the air. Hills and special
toboggan slides would be gentle and tame compared with
this steep, wild mountain-side. Wading out into the snow,
I sat down on my snow-shoes, and away we went, coasting
toward Pacific sea-level. Of course I exceeded the speed
limit. The smooth slope dropped nearly a_ thousand
feet in a half mile. ‘Toward the bottom I struck the smooth-
est place of all. Here was a spring that had overflowed
before the snow fell and coated the slope with almost
smooth ice. Over this icy slope I went like a rocket.
Near the bottom it flattened out abruptly, and I was shot
several feet into the air over a rainbow pathway—like a
football kicked for a goal. At the highest point I looked
down into the tops of timber-line trees.
After twenty or thirty feet through the air I came back
to earth and swept forward and downward at a hair-raising
pace. One of the dwarfed little trees that barely stuck up
through the snow caught into my snow-shoe and hung on.
The shoe was torn off and left hanging on the tree-top,
while I tumbled head over heels into four feet of snow.
But this was the greatest coast I had ever had. I looked