It is a dark and stormy night.  The wind howls through the branches of the forest and boughs of the sagebrush plateau, driving a horizontal snowfall into a whipped fury.  Snug inside a domicile, man and beast is very aware on the wailing going on outside.  Zephyr driven snow shot peens the glass windows, audible on the solid side of a study Eastern Sierra home.  Nothing dares venture out on a night such as this.

Attempting to sleep late at night, the blizzard continues to rage.  Tossing and turning, only light sleep is achievable.  Somewhere in the night, white death stalks.  Silent, stealthy, it carries on death and destruction soundlessly in the din of the snowstorm. Something nearby makes an unheard sound, a sudden feeling of danger snaps my attention back to the present.  As my attention is brought to focus, the wall explodes into blinding fragments.  I feel nothing as my body is hurled helter-skelter along with what was once four strong walls filled with light and warmth.  Just as suddenly as it all began, it ended; leaving me deaf and blind in the grips of death.  It is cold, oh so cold. Suddenly, I bolt forth.  I lay buried, not under a cold, frozen deathly blanket, but a warm, cozy one.  Realizing that I had a bad dream, I lay shaking
in my bed; warm, but unable to shake a bad case of nerves.  I decide I had better go over to Marks Saloon and take a little medicine for a case of the shakes and insomnia.

It is a dark and stormy night.  Exiting my shack, a powerful blizzard rages outside, smothering the Bodie Hills.  High winds sing, driven snow echo like cymbals.  Nothing, be it plant, animal or man breaks the white monochrome of deep snow upon these hills.  This is a night when one is shrewd to stay inside, be it man or beast.  In the white out conditions of the night, I aim my steps toward the dim lights of Bodie, down below.

The wind howls, snow drifts about my legs, filling my footsteps as rapidly as I had made them.  The pounding sound of the ever present stamps of the Standard Mill running 24 hours a day are drowned out by the fury of the blizzard.  Head forward against the tempest, I select one set of lights set amongst the
rest on Main Street.   The cozy Bodie saloon I've chosen is a better refuge than my own home, this vault of an old building more amiable than my small and cold shack up the hill by the railroad office.  Trying not to open the door more than is absolutely necessary, I squeeze my bundled form through.

It is nearly midnight.  A few men other than myself linger with the warm glow that emanates from the baroque parlor stove in the middle of the room.  Most of the men who have just gotten off the swing shift over at the Standard Mill go home to their wives, but a few of the single men prefer the meager warmth of a Bodie bar for a few hours than that of the frozen chill that awaits them at their respective shacks. That baroque old stove sitting in the middle of the room does its best to keep winter outdoors, though winter gets a finger in here and there: powdery snow
builds a little pile at the bottom of the door, cold air rushes down from the glass panes of the front window and the howling wind playing a drummer boy beat as it slaps the electric power line against the side of the building.
The other men speak quietly from their seats at a table in the corner.  I prefer my own company, standing at the bar.  In my hand is a shot glass containing an amber elixir that helps to warm my inside, all the while the old wood stove attempts to warm my outside.  Ernie, my host quietly cleans glasses behind the bar, waiting patiently for signals for another round.  Bare electric light bulbs sway slowly from long cords dangling from the ceiling, a glaring concession
to an enhanced life pioneered here in Bodie less than two decades ago.

Sedating my nerves with a shot of rye, Ernie acts upon my signal for a refill.  I sit and contemplate the honeyed liquid inside, a popular Mark Twain adage comes to mind: "Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man.  An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him."
Briefly pondering how much Irish blood flows in my veins, I toss back a second glass, my eyes locking upon the clock with its swinging pendulum, a calendar pinned below it.  With the approaching stroke of midnight, will be March 7, 1911.

Winters muted blast, the room's warmth and my glass of whiskey leave me in a meditative mood.  I consider Bodie herself: she has become an insignificant picture of her former self in these past decades since her tumultuous youth.  Her size shrunken and this tavern one of the last survivors of an era when Bodie flourished with them.  But a Bodie winter, oh how that has not changed!  The arctic blasts that routinely visit have not diminished as has Bodie.

Suddenly the lights go out.

"Damn!" curses my host under his breath.  My eyes slowly adjust to the firelight flickering from the stove in the middle of the room. "These electric lights are suppose to make life easier.  That is, until they quit!" gripes my host.
"C'mon Ernie.  You know that they always quit during a storm.  Wind whips them wires down somewhere between here and Green Creek or Jordan.  Nothing to fret over.  Don't you keep them old lanterns handy?" I quip dryly.
The sudden glare of a stuck match answers my question, as Ernie lights a lantern he had hidden behind the counter.
"I like this firelight better than them damn electric bulbs.  They give me a headache!" says Ernie with obvious sarcasm.
"Hey Ernie!" shouts one of the other men from the middle of the room.  "When you think the lights are coming back on?" "Probably when the storm quits, maybe by morning.  I know one thing for sure," Ernie replies, "nobody's going to go out there tonight and fix 'em!" "I bet the break in the line is at the top of the hill.  Probably have it fixed in no time" counters one of the other men. "Yeah, I've fixed them wires a time or too, nothin' to it" another man says.
"Finish up, boys" declares Ernie.  "It's midnight, I'm going to close up this joint."

All of us finish our shot of extra warmth.  Opening the door, the arctic blast comes in unabated.  Snow swirling off the roof of the saloon washes down the back of my neck.  I pull up my collar and make my way up the hill, past the schoolhouse looming even darker than the gloom of a winter storm.  It is a bit difficult navigating without the lights on various houses and the Standard Mill to pinpoint my position.  With a bit of difficulty, I find my house, hardly recognizable buried in the snow. Sealing out the winter chill behind me, I light a candle and fumble around my small cabin, readying myself for bed.  My small cabin does not have electricity as yet, though the commodity came to Bodie and the mills before the turn of the century, the town has only recently acquired it for general use.  I am dog tired, it was a tiring shift at the Standard attending to the amalgamation pans, then battling the heavy snow down into town. 

As I lay my head down on the pillow, my last thought was hope that the electricity is back on by the time I go on shift tomorrow.  For without it, there is no job to do in a mill run by electricity. I awake in the gray morn.  Groggily, I open the skimpy curtain and peer into the cold world out my window.  The wind has abated, and light snow flurries greet my eyes.  Oh, this snow!  I long for the time in which the sagebrush turns a silver green and rich verdant grass welcomes the sun.  But I can only stare at this bleak world and wish for warmer days.

I dress and head down the hill to Main Street, then head over to the U.S. Hotel for breakfast.  Upon entering the warm building, a few people are breakfasting and talking about the loss of electricity, weather and when the roads will be clear.  Mrs. Miller, manager of the hotel, seats me and mentions that the electricity is still off. "It's a good thing I still keep them lanterns around!" Mrs. Miller quips.  "They get plenty of use during the winter!." "Any news of when the power will come back on?" I ask. "There's a group of men heading out along the line now" mentions a man across the room over his breakfast.  "I'm sure there are men coming this way from the power plants.  The mills are down, so I'm sure it's top priority to get the juice flowing again." "I suppose it's a simple break, the telephone and electricity will be back in service soon" remarked Mrs. Miller. "Telephone out too?" someone else asks. "Outside line is out, but the town switchboard is still on line" states another. A man, just walking in and overhearing the conversation added "The line to Bridgeport has been fixed.  I just came back from the break up on the hill."

After breakfasting, I head up the hill to the Standard and my work day.  Being as there still is no electricity, the Standard is idle.  Management has decided to use the time to do a little fixing here and there while the machinery is down.
Just before the end of the day, my boss, Mr. Snively comes and calls everyone to him. "We need a bunch of men to go out to Jordan!  There's been word of  avalanches that wiped out both Jordan and Lundy power plants!  There has been deaths. We need hardy men to tackle the job of snow shoeing down and digging out the bodies and hopefully any survivors!" Many murmurs went up as the news overwhelms us.  Most of us know the power of a slide.  It makes even the toughest man stop and say a silent prayer for those who may be buried alive under it. "I'll go!"  Hands raised quick and high to volunteer to rescue their stricken fellowmen.  Mine went up just as rapidly among them.

That night, I joined the crew shoeing down Cottonwood Canyon toward Scanavino's Ranch.  The drive to help our fellowman drives us forward, though most of us have not had a wink of sleep for nearly two rounds of the clock.  At last, as dawn begins to reveal the new day, we pull up to Scanavino's Ranch, situated where Cottonwood Creek spills out into the Mono Basin.  Our tired and sore muscles compel us to stop and partake of the hospitality of the large family
clan. "I hear it's bad, real bad!  All the snow of Copper Mountain came down and cleaned the power house right off the face of the earth!"  this news hit my ears at the ranch.  "It looks like it is as though that power plant was never built!.  Slide plum wiped her out, then the snowfall's covered it all up!" "There's dead strewn all over the place!  And wouldn't you know it, we've gotten word that the small powerhouse up at Lundy has been hit too!  Mr. Knowlton's not been heard from and we're afraid for his life."

Again it's time point our long shoes westward to Jordan.  Heavy fog has formed in the basin.  I've seen this often, it can be so bright and cheerful on a calm winter's day up at Bodie, and down here at Mono it is submerged in this thick morass that never seems to go away until a storm comes and whisks it out.  It has often become so thick that it threatens even Bodie, sending tentacles of dark grey fog up Cottonwood Canyon and into Bodie Bowl.  The fog is depressing on a soul after a spell, it casts despair on the gloomy task that we have at hand. My crew is exhausted by the time we reach the Mattly Ranch near Jordan that night.  Some of us even require care ourselves, having frostbite in various places on our bodies since we haven't taken the time ourselves to fully prepare for such an arduous task.  The thermometer has been well below zero since we've been in the basin.  The warmth of the ranch house is welcome relief to our weary bodies.  Well fed and warm, I hit the sack and immediately fall into a dreamless sleep. All too soon, I am awakened.  It is time to undertake the grisly task that I have come here for.  It is not yet dawn, as we get ready to snowshoe the last
mile to the site of the Jordan power house.  The thermometer is well past twenty below as we light out.  I am still stiff and weary, but the thought that someone may yet still be alive under that slide drives me and the others to expend ourselves in their behalf.  In no time it seems, the call goes up from our leader "Here she is boys!"

In the fog and dim light, the place doesn't look any different than any other part of the land we've been pushing through.  The new fallen snow has softened the harsh features of the slide.  As the dawn progresses, we can make out where the men before us have been probing and digging.  Other features of the power of an avalanche become apparent.  A few shattered slabs of concrete poke out here and there.  Personal belongings lay strewn.  It is very difficult to move around in this morass.  The long shoes hang up in everything, but to take them off means a man engulfs himself in the deep snow.  Mattly says it's over eight feet deep on the level here.

Hours upon hours we poke, probe and dig.  One by one, we exhume frozen and mangled bodies of the slides victims.  It is obvious it caught them sleeping, all dressed in their bed clothes.  It is an absurd and indescribable feeling to remove my skis, crawl down under a big concrete slab, tunneling into the entrance of an abyss of death and meet its victim face to face; staring out at me in frozen horror. As I pull out the body of yet another casualty, I hear excited shouts of the men.  When I reach the surface, all the activity seems to be centering on a point almost two hundred feet closer to the mountain from where I am. "She's alive!" shouts the men.  "I can't believe it!  Who could survive such a thing?!"
I lay the body that I have been working to the surface onto a sled.  I then begin to work my way over to where the group is centered.  I see a dog among them.  Funny, I don't recall us having one in our group. I thrash and stumble over to the gathering.  "It looks like her leg's real bad!" says one. "It's so unbelievable!" cries another. "She's lucky to be alive!" "That dog has kept her warm and alive for all this time!" "If we hadn't heard that dog barking under the snow, we probably wouldn't have found her until spring!" A woman's sobbing sobers the men.  The dog is whimpering at the woman.  The men wrap her up and place her on a sled.  The men team up in sled dog fashion to pull her away back to the safety and warmth of Mattley's Ranch.

I stay behind and do not yet join the jubilant group that take the woman away, for there is still the grim task of removing the bodies we have found here, and making sure that all the dead are accounted for.  I labor until dark.  Then it is my turn to pull a sled with its burden of extinguished life. Returning to Mattley's, I am exhausted.  It has been almost seventy hours since I stood at Mark's bar back in Bodie when this slide both extinguished light and life here at Jordan.  It is amazing how modern technology has made possible an event can effect so many people far and wide.

Talk at the ranch was both exciting and depressing.  Excitement that the woman, whose name has finally come to me as Mrs. Mason, has been able to stay alive all the time entrapped in her cold tomb next to her dead husband.  Depressed talk centers around the death and destruction we've all been forced to stare in the face.  But soon, the effects of it all hit us and one by one, all begin to separate and retire.  Well fed and warm, I hit the sack and immediately fall into a dreamless sleep.

Off in the night, another avalanche thunders down the mountain.  A premonition snaps my attention from dreamless sleep to sudden awareness.  Immediately the wall explodes, thunder overcomes my senses, then they are snuffed out.
I bolt upright.  I hear thunder again.  But yet I do not see chaos and white death all around.  Glancing up, I see the blue Mono Basin sky turning black. Another summer thundershower has come over the Sierra summits, its wanderlust will take it across the basin and out into Nevada. The sun hides behind the advancing towering cumulonimbus cell.  Stretching, I rise up from my spot on the sunny side of my pickup truck, my dog, Reno jumps up, ready to run and explore this grassy spot in the northwestern corner of Mono Basin.  Ana, my lovely wife is nearby with Lady our other dog, poking
about in the tidbits left scattered about.

It is July, in the first years of the ninth decade of the twentieth century.  No blizzard conditions will come to Copper Mountain for another three or four months.  The immediate beauty of this corner of Mono Basin focuses my attention away from catnapping in the sun, as Reno and I wander over to inspect the site where the Jordan power house stood over eighty years ago. Walking toward the ruins, my back is turned to the offspring of the killed Jordan power plant, humming as it feeds an electrical charge into the Southern California Edison grid.  Sage hen squawk and fly to a safe distance at my presence.  Various basin birds flit and chirp in the sage and willows.  A vapor trail from a San Francisco bound passenger airliner traces a line through the clouds across the Mono sky.  Copper Mountain stands dominant, its giant "7" created by the alignment of several old mining roads blazoned across its otherwise bare face. There is not much to see at Jordan.  A few bits of rusty, riveted pipe of large diameter, a few small foundations and slabs of concrete, the bore of the water discharge from the Pelton wheel, bits of metal and wooden trash strewn the distance that the snow had run its deadly course.  Sagebrush hides most of what is left.

The overhead cloud lets loose of its payload, rain begins to fall upon Jordan.  Life giving rain to the green grasses that grow here, rain that makes the sagebrush radiant compared to its relatives further out in the rain shadow of the Sierra.  Ana and I take shelter in the truck's cab, enjoying the free show of electrical energy from the heavens.  Lady and Reno take shelter under the truck.  Accompanying the light show, bass and drums pound the earth from that big band box in the sky. Soon, the electrical cell passes eastward and a steady shower keeps Ana and I in the cab a little longer.  I pull out a book that gives a brief account of the events of March 7, 1911.  My dream had pretty much followed them with detail, the rest of the story in the book narrates that Mr. Mason was pulled by forty-eight men on a sled on a three day trip to Bodie and placed in the hospital there.  Imagine her resolve, enduring the ride, cold and pain from an infected leg, infected with gangrene from such long contact with the body of her deceased husband.  It was soon evident that the leg must be removed, so again it was necessary for Mrs. Mason to travel, to Oakland, where her leg was amputated.  She stayed there for the rest of her days, permanently employed by Southern Sierra Power Company.

After the brief show and shower, Ana, the dogs and I walk across the valley.  The air is pungent with wet sagebrush.  Ah!  Favorite of aromas to me!  Our sites are set on a little spot at the north edge of the meadow.  A few trees mark the site of the Fred Mattly Ranch, the site of the first warm air and warm bodies that Mrs. Mason seen in almost three days.  Nearby, at the base of a small hill is a fence.  This fence encloses the remains of those killed in both avalanches, the one that snuffed out the power houses of both Lundy and Jordan. My wife, dogs and I return to the truck, then drive up the canyon to Lundy Lake.  Driving beyond the end of the pavement at Lundy Lake Resort, we continue up the canyon a short distance.  Turning left, we drop down toward the creek. The aspens are thick in this nook in the Sierra.  Aspen and willow hide all.  Traces of history lay scattered about here, but it takes a sharp eye to spot them.  Fragments of mining excitements of the past, ones so fabulous that men stared White Death in the face and ignored it, because the glitter of gold was far prettier.  There are traces that White Death rampaged in this canyon, here in a little clearing in the willows, aspens and pines lay evidence of that.

The site of the Lundy power house lay scattered around the clearing: a large iron pipe suspended part way across Mill Creek, cement slabs, shards of lumber with gauges and meters still attached, switches and controllers.  Here died D.O. Knowlton during the same storm that snuffed out those lives at Jordan. It is hard to imagine during a glorious summertime day in Mono Basin the power of White Death.  Those who live and work in and below the mighty Sierra in winter know its constant presence.  Avalanche control and patrols at ski areas and along bad stretches of highways help keep the risk to a minimum.  But yet, it sometimes still happens, as in recent years the death of a back country skier attests.
Modern technology has helped to lessen the fears that sometime in the night, a premonition of sudden danger will strike, followed by an immediate explosion of the world around them.  And hopefully there will not be another marble slab added inside the little fence at Jordan.

By David A. Wright
Contact Author At:
greatbasinresearch2@juno.com
Great Basin Research
Big Pine, CA