United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Slavin silently pointed downwards. There, plainly discernible on the surface of the wind-packed, hard-crusted snow, were the corrugated imprints of overshoed feet coming and going apparently in the direction of the previously mentioned coulee. Redmond indicated two rounded impressions at the foot of the boulder, with two smaller ones behind.
The rest of the journey left but a blurred memory of an almost sightless struggle through a filmy haze, in which we occasionally lost each other and touch with the guiding poles, until at last, caked thick with wind-packed snow, we caught sight of a pale glimmer, and fell solidly, as it were, out of the saddle in the shelter of the station. Here, however, a crushing disappointment awaited us.
The snow gathered in drifts often up to my middle, with bare, wind-swept spaces between, and these drifts at times were crusted with wind-packed snow too hard to be waded through, and I was obliged to break the snow crust by throwing myself at full length on it.
Then out upon a lake we swung where the wind-packed snow made easy going. Here the heavy sleds slid along as if loadless, and we broke into a run. On rounding a point we saw a band of woodland caribou trot off the lake and enter the distant forest.
Here and there wide-spreading, wind-packed carpets of snow covered the ice, while in between big stretches of clear, glassy ice, acting as skylights, lit up the beavers' submarine gardens around their ice-locked homes.
Gradually, however, our speed slackened, and we came out into the moonlight on the hard, wind-packed snow of the open steppe. Half an hour's brisk travel brought us into the supposed vicinity of the Korak encampment, but we saw as yet no signs of either reindeer or tents.
Their broad, soft-padded paws were like snow shoes, bearing them up on the wind-packed surface. Their tufted ears stood straight up, alert for any unwonted sound. Their absurd stub tails, not four inches long, and looking as if they had been bitten off, twitched with eagerness.
As I had frequently had my nose frozen, it now turned white very quickly, and a half-breed, who was crossing with us, turned round every once in a while and exclaimed to me: "Oh my gud! your nose all froze!" The snow seemed harder than ever, and for long stretches we took off our snowshoes and ran over the drifts, but so wind-packed were they that they received little impression from our feet.
It was a beautiful sunny day and the air was very still; and though the snow was wind-packed and hard, the footing was very tiresome, for the whole surface of the lake was just one endless mass of hard-packed snowdrifts that represented nothing so much as a great, stormy, white-capped sea that had been instantly congealed.
Word Of The Day