The snow of an avalanche has the same power as the ice of a glacier in the preservation of whatever animal matter may be embedded in it. On one occasion the bodies of a chamois and her young one were found in an avalanche in Tyrol in a fit condition for food, on its melting two years after it came down, its huge size having prevented its disappearance the first summer.
These huge Grundlawinen come down, as I have already said, in the same track season after season; it is therefore reasonable to suppose that the inhabitants of districts peculiarly exposed to such avalanches would try and control their snowy invaders by every means in their power; and, in truth, this is just what is done to a certain extent, though a neglect of the most obvious precautions prevailed in the country till quite within recent years. Even now one is often astonished at the amount of unnecessary damage which the Swiss will calmly allow an avalanche year after year to do, till they suddenly awake to the fact that a wall or two across the couloir (or avalanche track) may make the whole difference between their being able or not to cultivate a certain sunny meadow in the valley, which has hitherto been plentifully strewn with stones and other débris regularly every spring.
It is a well-known fact that by far the best preservative against avalanches is a thickly wooded slope, and the Swiss authorities, fully recognising this, have of late years caused a very large amount of replanting to be carried out, and are most stringent in their rules regulating the cutting of trees. By great trouble and care being taken concerning the forests, Switzerland could be freed to a large extent from the destruction wrought by avalanches.
In many places travellers will notice avalanche-breakers, in the form of triangular stone walls, which have been erected to protect whole villages, or individual houses or churches. There is an avalanche-breaker of this sort at Frauenkirch, near Davos-Platz, where the north wall of the church is constructed so that, should an avalanche sweep down upon it, the surface exposed to its full fury being pointed in shape, tends to divide and turn aside the snow directly the point comes in contact with the avalanche. Similar breakers may be seen attached to several houses in the same and other neighbourhoods. Fences or stone walls across steep slopes, or stakes driven into the ground at intervals, are also a very efficient hindrance to the descent of avalanches. Visitors at St. Moritz have doubtless noticed the contrivances of this sort on the slope descending from the Alp Laret to the Cresta Fussweg; they are well seen by any one standing on the high-road near the Bär Inn (famed for the quaint caricature fresco portraits on its exterior of the late Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone).
It is marvellous to notice how weak an obstacle will hold back the largest avalanche before the snow is set in motion, and yet once the great mass is launched down on its destructive career, it sweeps all before it.
The balled structure of a compact avalanche, which those who visit it within a few weeks of its fall will have remarked, is caused by the damp snow having rolled over and over till the circular form of its particles resulted. I remember an enormous avalanche of this kind which fell near Bouveret (Vaud) at the end of March 1886. It came from the Gramont, and rushing some 4000 feet down the mountain, dashed across the railway and the road, and ended its course in the lake. It fortunately came down at night—which seems odd, till one remembers that the slope from which it descended faced north—so no accident resulted, and the following afternoon all Montreux flocked across the lake, to wonder at the high walls of the cutting which had been made to allow the trains to pass, and to pelt each other with the snowy balls which had rolled hither and thither amongst the violets and primroses of spring.
Grundlawinen often attain a mass of 100,000 cubic metres (Heim, “Gletscherkunde”). The great “Raschitsch” avalanche near Zernez (Lower Engadine), which fell on April 23, 1876, across the high-road into the river, was 168 metres wide, 12 metres thick, and 300 metres long, 600,000 cubic metres in bulk, and the tunnel cut through to allow the traffic to be carried on was 75 metres long. This avalanche was much exceeded in dimensions by the one which fell in February 1888 near Glarus-Davos, of which the snow-tunnel was upwards of three hundred feet in length, and over twelve feet high. This avalanche is noted throughout Switzerland, and is known as the “Schwabentobellawine.” It only falls in very snowy seasons, but when it does come down, it is of enormous size.
In the year 1888 it carried away a road-mender, whose body was only discovered some three months later; it was found on the right bank of the Landwasser, having evidently been blown across the river by the wind preceding the avalanche.
Avalanches have sometimes caused disastrous floods by falling into the beds of rivers and damming up the water. On January 29, 1827, Süs suffered from a similar occurrence, the Inn being completely blocked up for several hours during the night, and the water flooding the village in consequence. It would be wearying to give more than these few examples of the effects of Grundlawinen, we will therefore pass on to the subject of ice-avalanches. These must be a tolerably familiar sight to most persons who have travelled in Switzerland, judging by the crowds who, day after day throughout the summer, sit outside the little inns of the Wengern Alp or Kleine Scheideck, dividing their attention between their luncheons and the thundering falls of ice from the glaciers of the Jungfrau.
Ice-avalanches are quite different to both the other kinds, inasmuch as they always fall from glaciers.