"It was almost noon when they left the mine, and by two o'clock they halted on one of the crests to cook dinner. The horses were hobbled where a patch of Buffalo grass provided good pastureage, and Rattlesnake Mike started a fire to cook the meal. Tom and John got out their tackle to catch a few trout, when a fearful roll of thunder sounded along the crest. "'She come down, pooty queeck!' exclaimed Mike, startled out of his usual calmness. "'Do you mean Old Grizzly?' Tom asked him. "But before he could reply, there was such a crash and roar, and the whole ground shook under their feet as if an earthquake had caused it. Everyone stood aghast looking at what had been snow-capped Grizzly but a moment before. So astonished were the men that they couldn't speak. "The roar and tumult continued so seemingly close at hand, that the men ran for their horses, and would have ridden down the trail had not Mike laughed and applied a match to the kindling, just as if nothing was happening above them on Grizzly Slide. It instantly quieted the fears of the others, and they turned again to wait for further events. "Tom Latimer says, that what caused such a panicky feeling in them all, was the fact that one moment they had seen the glistening cap of Old Grizzly, and the next, it was gone, and a great cloud of flying white particles hid the scene for a time. "The terrific detonation they heard immediately after the peak's snow-cap rolled down the mountain-side, was caused by the mass of rock, ice, snow and general debris, striking the ground below. How far it fell before striking, they could not say, but Mike claims it must have been hurtled, from the peak of Grizzly, to the great gulch that runs along its lower side, about five thousand feet below--all that distance before landing and filling the ravines about that section. "All the way down, from Grizzly Gulches to the bottoms that run along Bear Forks branches, the avalanche tore up trees, boulders, moraine, and other heavy matter, that generally forms a dam for smaller slides than this one was. But this time, entire forests were shoved along, still standing, just like a great cake of icing with fancy frosting of colored sugar on top of it, is pushed off from a slice of birthday cake, when the knife loosens it. The moment any part of this avalanche came up against a cliff, or rolled over into vast ravines, that much of the sliding forest tumbled up against itself, or fell into the gulch to instantly fill up the cleft and cause the remaining slide to roll over it. "The end of that avalanche did not come until it reached the valley of Bear Forks, just below Pebbly Pit ranch. If your home had not been snugly located up in that crater, but had been down in the valley by the river, it would have been completely covered with the tons of trash that still remained after having rolled for miles, and finally worn itself out on the banks of the stream.