The Spell of the Rockies

by Enos A. Mills

Mountain-Top Weather

The narrow Alpine zone of peaks and snow that forms the crest of the Rocky Mountains has its own individual elemental moods, its characteristic winds, its electrical and other peculiarities, and a climate of its own. Commonly its days are serene and sunny, but from time to time it has hail and snow and showers of wind-blown rain, cold as ice-water. It is subject to violent changes from clear, calm air to blizzard.

I have enjoyed these strange, silent heights in every season of the year. In climbing scores of these peaks, in crossing the passes, often on snowshoes, and in camping here and there on the skyline, I have encountered these climatic changes and had numerous strange experiences. From these experiences I realize that the transcontinental aviator, with this realm of peak and sky, will have some delightful as well as serious surprises. He will encounter stern conditions. He may, like a storm-defying bird, be carried from his course by treacherous currents and battle with breakers or struggle in vain in the monstrous, invisible maelstroms that beset this ocean of air. Of these skyline factors the more imposing are wind, cold, clouds, rain, snow, and subtle, capricious electricity.

High winds are common across the summits of these mountains; and they are most prevalent in winter. Those of summer, though less frequent and much more short-lived, are a menace on account of their fury and the suddenness with which they surprise and sweep the heights.

Early one summer, while exploring a wide alpine moorland above the timber-line, I—and some others—had an experience with one of those sudden stormbursts. The region was utterly wild, but up to it straggling tourists occasionally rode for a view of the surrounding mountain world. All alone, I was studying the ways of the wild inhabitants of the heights. I had spent the calm, sunny morning in watching a solitary bighorn that was feeding among some boulders. He was aged, and he ate as though his teeth were poor and walked as though afflicted with rheumatism. Suddenly this patriarch forgot his age and fled precipitately, with almost the speed of frightened youth. I leaped upon a boulder to watch him, but was instantly knocked headlong by a wild blast of wind. In falling I caught sight of a straw hat and a wrecked umbrella falling out of the sky. Rising amid the pelting gale of flung hail, ice-water, and snow, I pushed my way in the teeth of the storm, hoping for shelter in the lee of a rock-pile about a hundred yards distant. A lady's disheveled hat blew by me, and with the howl of the wind came, almost drowned, excited human utterances. Nearing the rock-pile, I caught a vague view of a merry-go-round of man and horse, then a glimpse of the last gyration, in which an elderly Eastern gentleman parted company with a stampeded bronco.

Five tourists had ridden up in the sunshine to enjoy the heights, and the suddenness and fierceness of the storm had thrown them into a panic and stampeded their horses. They were drenched and severely chilled, and they were frightened. I made haste to tell them that the storm would be brief. While I was still trying to reassure them, the clouds commenced to dissolve and the sun came out. Presently all were watching the majestic soaring of two eagles up in the blue, while I went off to collect five scattered saddle-ponies that were contentedly feeding far away on the moor.

Though the winter winds are of slower development, they are more prolonged and are tempestuously powerful. Occasionally these winds blow for days; and where they follow a fall of snow they blow and whirl this about so wildly that the air is befogged for several hundred feet above the earth. So violently and thickly is the powdered snow flung about that a few minutes at a time is the longest that one can see or breathe in it. These high winter winds come out of the west in a deep, broad stratum that is far above most of the surface over which they blow. Commonly a high wind strikes the western slope of the Continental Divide a little below the altitude of eleven thousand feet. This striking throws it into fierce confusion. It rolls whirling up the steeps and frequently shoots far above the highest peaks. Across the passes it sweeps, roars down the cañons on the eastern slope, and rushes out across the plains. Though the western slope below eleven thousand feet is a calm zone, the entire eastern slope is being whipped and scourged by a flood of wind. Occasionally the temperature of these winds is warm.

These swift, insistent winds, torn, intercepted, and deflected by dashing against the broken skyline, produce currents, counter-currents, sleepy eddies, violent vertical whirls, and milling maelstroms that are tilted at every angle. In places there is a gale blowing upward, and here and there the air pours heavily down in an invisible but almost crushing air-fall.

One winter I placed an air-meter in Granite Pass, at twelve thousand feet altitude on the slope of Long's Peak. During the first high wind I fought my way up to read what the meter said. Both the meter and myself found the wind exceeded the speed limit. Emerging above the trees at timber-line, I had to face the unbroken fury of the gale as it swept down the slope from the heights above. The region was barren of snow. The wind dashed me with sandblasts and pelted me with gravel volleys that were almost unbearable. My face and wrists were bruised, and blood was drawn in many places where the gravel struck.