The white cascade : the Great Northern Railway disaster and America's deadliest avalanche / Gary Krist

Author: Krist, Gary
Published: New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2007.
Edition: 1st ed.
Physical Description: xii, 315 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

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Contents

Author's note -- Maps -- Prologue: Late thaw -- Railroad through the mountains -- Long straw -- Last mountains -- Temporary delay -- Over the hump -- Town at the end of the world -- First loss -- Closing doors -- Empire builder looks on -- Ways of escape -- Last chances -- Avalanche -- "Reddened snow" -- Inquest -- Act of God -- Epilogue: a memory erased -- Afterword: Final note on the Wellington avalanche -- Appendix A: Wellington roster -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index.

Summary

In February 1910, a monstrous blizzard centered on Washington State hit the Northwest, breaking records. Near the tiny town of Wellington, high in the Cascade Mountains, two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found their railcars gradually being buried in the rising drifts. For days, an army of the Great Northern Railroad's most dedicated men worked round-the-clock to rescue the trains. But the storm was unrelenting, and to the passenger's great anxiety, the railcars--their only shelter--were parked precariously on the edge of a steep ravine. Food and coal supplies dwindled. Panic and rage set in as snow accumulated on the cliffs overhanging the trains. Finally, just when escape seemed possible, the earth shifted and a colossal avalanche tumbled from the high pinnacles, sweeping the trains and their sleeping passengers over the steep slope and down the mountainside.--From publisher description.

Subject(s)

Avalanches

ISBN

0805077057
9780805077056

Bibliography Note

Includes bibliographical references (pages [291]-297) and index.

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