It is beginning to feel like spring in Colorado but just to remind myself that winter may not be over, here is another weather related story:

Portland, Ore., Jan. 7, 1885.—It has been snowing out this way lately. If anyone doubts it let him ask the officers of the Oregon railway and navigation company. He may get an answer that will make him think that he has been struck by an avalanche.

On December 16, a passenger train left here over that road. It got as far east as Booneville, about forty miles. It has been there packed in the snow for twenty days. Doubts are expressed whether the train will get out from the thirty foot drifts before spring, for at present the company seems to be largely dependent upon Providence for the clearing of its buried track. It has not the machinery necessary to fight drifting snow.

The Northern Pacific forces uncovered the track for about 100 miles on the west end of the road and from the east to within about twenty-five miles of the imprisoned cars. The O.R.&N., however, has failed to keep the track clear behind the excavators and in consequence the Northern Pacific snow plows and shovelers are likely to get snowed in.

A hundred and fifty men from the Puget Sound division of the Northern Pacific are now at work behind the blockaded train. A hundred of them shovel and operate the machinery and the rest cut wood for the engines and for the open fires that are necessary to protect the men while they work.

The impression is growing that the O.R.&N. road will not be open for regular travel again this winter unless there is a radical change in the weather or the experienced eastern men of the Northern Pacific, who are accustomed to dealing with snow in its worst shade in Minnesota, Dakota and Montana get charge of the work. So far this winter the Northern Pacific has not been obstructed a day.

Fortunately, the number of people on the unfortunate train is not large, only about twenty-five. Food has been regularly and abundantly sent to them. They have also been supplied with fuel cut from the surrounding forests.

The blockade is considered unprecedented in the history of American railroading. For twenty days a great trunk line has been blocked and all direct communication between Portland and the east shut off. Travelers and the mails now have to go by sea to San Francisco, a by no means pleasant journey at this season, and thence east over the Central Pacific.

Brrrrr!

It was -17 when we got up this morning.  We couldn't see the mountains for three days because of the clouds and snow but the sun is back and the snow-capped mountains are beautiful. The snow on the ground means the earth won't have a chance to warm up and our temperatures will remain chilly.  Could have been worse.  This could have started last November or December.

Here is a story about the cold from a Minnesota newspaper that I ran across while looking for something else. You may want to grab a cup of hot chocolate before you read it.

TRAGEDY OF A GLACIER
How One of the Victims Came to Have Two Funerals

In the cemetery at Goschenen in Switzerland a strange burial took place at the end of the nineteenth century.  The coffin, a small one, decently and decorously consigned to earth, contained part of a human leg, a boot, some shreds of clothing and 1 franc, 50 centimes of Swiss money. The unusual ceremony was the concluding chapter of a sad history that began on the Rhone glacier eighteen years before.

In the summer of 1882 the burgomaster of Goschenen and two friends undertook the ascent of the glacier.  All three lost their lives and the bodies were found a week later frozen stiff. That of the burgomaster was stuck fast in a crevasse and in dragging it forth the frozen right leg broke off like a snapped icicle and fell into the blue depths of the fissure.  The poor mutilated body was laid away in the cemetery with every hope, for the mayor had been greatly loved and respected in his little community.

The peasants say “Seven years the glacier grows, seven years she melts,” and in melting she honestly brings to the mouth of her river all that has fallen down her icy blue throat—a belief that, although partly fanciful, contains much that is true. By this strange operation of nature the leg of the mayor of Goschenen came to light after eighteen years. The boot was still on the foot; some rags of clothing clung to the leg; even the trifling sum of money in the unfortunate man’s trousers pocket was honestly returned by the glacier, which keeps nothing not its own.

After eighteen years the leg was buried beside its master. The tragic pathos of its recovery robbed the occurrence of all absurdity.

From the Princeton Union, Princeton, Minnesota