The first general
winter storm that yields snow that is to form a lasting portion of the
season's supply, seldom breaks on the mountains before the end of
November. Then, warned by the sky, cautions mountaineers, together with
the wild sheep, deer, and most of the birds and bears, make haste to the
lowlands or foot-hills; and burrowing marmots, mountain beavers,
wood-rats, and such people go into winter quarters, some of them not
again to see the light of day until the general awakening and
resurrection of the spring in June or July. The first heavy fall is
usually from about two to four feet in depth. Then, with intervals of
splendid sunshine, storm succeeds storm, heaping snow on snow, until
thirty to fifty feet has fallen. But on account of its settling and
compacting, and the almost constant waste from melting and evaporation,
the average depth actually found at any time seldom exceeds ten feet in
the forest region, or fifteen feet along the slopes of the summit peaks.
Even during the coldest weather evaporation never wholly ceases, and the
sunshine that abounds between the storms is sufficiently powerful to
melt the surface more or less through all the winter months.
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