One of my trips as Snow Observer carried me across the wild Continental Divide while the sky was clearing after a heavy snowfall. In climbing to the summit I passed close to three herds of deer that were stranded in deep snow. But the high wind had swept the treeless summit, and in places the snow had been deeply excavated. In other places it had been thrown into massive drifts. On the summit plateau at an altitude of 12,000 feet I rounded a crag and came close upon a flock of mountain sheep in the moorland from which the wind had swept most of the snow. The sheep were bunched, scattered, and a few were lying down. Here in the heights the sheep had already forgotten the storm, while the elk and the deer far down in the wooded slopes were deeply troubled by the snow. With this open place on the mountain top, these hardy dwellers of the summit could long be indifferent to deep snow or to its deliberate melting. They bunched in the farthest corner of their wind-cleared place and eyed me curiously while I went by. I back-tracked their wallowed trail to the nook in which they had endured the three-day storm. This place was nearly a mile distant, but over most of the way to the snowless pasture the sheep had travelled on the very edge of the plateau, from which wind and gravity had cleared most of the snow. They had stood through the storm bunched closely against a leeward plateau wall several yards below the summit. The snow had eddied down and buried them deeply. It had required a long and severe struggle to get out of this snow and back through it to the summit, as their footmarks and body impressions plainly showed. This storm was a general one and deeply covered several states. It was followed by two weeks of cold. For several hundred miles along this and other ranges the deer and the elk had a starving time, while the numerous flocks of sheep on summits escaped serious affliction. Evidently mountain sheep know their range and understand how to fight the game of self-preservation in the mountain snows. The fact that sheep spend their winters on the mountain summits would indicate that they find a lower death rate and more comfort here than they could find in the lowlands. The morning I started across Sawtooth Pass the snow was deep. A gray sky and a few lazily falling snowflakes indicated that it might be deepened. And soon the flakes were falling fast and the wind was howling. Only between gusts could I see. But on I went, for it was easier to advance than to retreat. I passed over the summit only to find the wind roaring wildly on the other side. Abandoning the course of the snow-buried trail, I went with the wind, being extremely careful to keep myself under control lest the breezes boost me over an unexpected cliff. The temperature was a trifle below zero, and I watched nose, fingers, and cheeks to keep them from freezing.