May, t9o 4 [ THE CONDOR 71 gales of wind, a veritable blizzard, the light powdery crystals driving into every crack and cranny, piling behind obstructions in huge drifts, ten, twenty, fifty feet deep. By April the heavy storms have passed; the snow rapidly settles so that one may walk upon the crust, and from now on the snow melts quickly. The weather during the winter is not bitterly cold, the temperature rarely drops to zero and then only on clear nights; but as a rule there is frost every night. The traveler through these vast wastes of snow is impressed with the utter silence and solitude. All the familiar scenes of summer are gone. The roads and the trails are blotted out; the houses are eave-deep or entirely covered; the alpine lake is a flat white plain; the waterfalls are mute, mere trickling driblets over ice- sheeted precipices, and all the varied and abundant animal life of summer has dis- appeared. No marmot or lagomys calls shrilly from the rock piles, no chipmunk chatters as you pass; there is no whistle of the quail, no song of warbler or thrush. One may hear the rattle of a woodpecker, the cry of a blue-fronted jay, or the lisp- ing notes of a mountain chickadee, but even these are uncommon. During the past four or five years I have made several short winter excursions LAKE OF THE WOODS AND PYRAMID PEAK into the high mountains both at Sumhilt Station and at Glen Alpine, at elevations from six to ten thousand feet. Traveling here is done entirely on the Norwegian skee for the snow averages from ten to twenty feet deep on the level. These skees are thin strips of wood three or four inches wide and from six to ten feet long with an upcurve at the front end. They are used exclusively by the dwellers along the railroad and at the scattered resorts, in preference to the racket- shaped Canadian snow-shoe. Without these one would often sink waist deep in the sott, powdery snow. The usual way of reaching the Glen Alpine region is by railroad to Truckee, thence on skees sixteen miles to Lake Tahoe where a little mail steamer twice a week makes the circuit of the lake. Leaving the boat at Tallac at the south end of the lake we use the skees once more to make the seven miles to Glen Alpine where food and shelter may be had from the watchman at the resort. From here it is four miles to Mr. Tallac and six miles to Pyrmnid Peak, each mountain being about ten thousand feet altitude. A complete list of the birds is not attempted; only those species which appear
