Post 00355
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Some years ago an old Ute Indian told me that during a winter of his boyhood the snow for weeks lay “four ponies deep” over the Rocky Mountains, and that “most elk die, many ponies die, wolves die, and Indian nearly die too.” A “Great Snow” of this kind is terrible for wild folk.
Snow and cold sometimes combine to do their worst. The snow covers everything deeply; then follows an unbroken period of extreme cold; the Ice King is again enthroned; the snow fiendishly refuses to melt, and lies for weeks; the endurance of most wild folk becomes exhausted, and birds, herds, and wolves perish. Similar calamities used occasionally to afflict our primitive ancestors.
Over the vast Northwest a feature of the climate is the winter-annihilating Chinook wind. This occasionally saves the people of the wilds when other relief is impossible. The snowy earth is quickly transformed by this warm, dry wind. In a few hours conditions become summer-like. Fortunately, the Chinook often follows a blizzard. Many a time at the eleventh hour it has dramatically saved the waiting, suffering birds and rescued the snow-buried and starving folk of the wilds.