Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1916 — LINEMEN BRAVE WINTER PERILS IN MOUNTAINS [ARTICLE]

LINEMEN BRAVE WINTER PERILS IN MOUNTAINS

Face Cold, Snow and Avalanche to Fix Breaks in Wire Communication. HAVE MANY NARROW ESCAPES One Lineman Is Trailed for Hours by a Mountain Lion —Another Is Rescued From Avalanche After Harrowing Experience. Seattle, Wash. —Sometimes after a big storm in the mountains readers of the newspapers learn that “telegraph and telephone lines are down.” Usually the next day after reading such a dispatch, sometimes but a few hours later, the patron of a telephone or telegraph line will learn that the line is again open. It is a terrific storm that can cripple the wires of a big telegraph or telephone corporation more than 24 hours. The public has become accustomed to this thing. It expects as a matter of course that the lines will be open after only a few hours. In fact, actual interruption of traffic over message lines is very rare, for business may be routed perhaps half way round the American continent to avoid the trouble zone, but it will reach its destination some way. That’s what the superintendents of telegraph and telephone operating departments are paid for. i But who fixes these lines in the snow fields? How is it that they are seldom closed more than a few hours? Men do that work, for it is a man’s job—a job to try the quality of the bravest man. When some winter morning the rain clouds part and show for a moment the Cascades shining white in newfallen snow be reasonably sure that up along those wind-harassed sum-

mits, following the lonely trails, defying the menace of the gale and the avalanches, are the figures of men on snowshoes, patroling the wires that chatter incessantly with the gossip of the world these workers serve but seldom see.

At Seattle and Spokane the wire chiefs stand at the switchboards Watching the working conditions of every wire. Fifty miles away a storm swoops down on Snoqualmie pass. In the pass the world is suddenly blotted out by the white hand of the gale. The stinging snow and the wind screeches. And now and again the shrill key of the wind is blotted out by a roar that blocks the mountains as an avalanche sweeps over the cliffs. Trees fall and wires and poles go down.

Trailed by a Lion. At his' switchboard the wire chief suddenly loses Spokane. He connects up his Wheatstone bridge, a device which measures wire by the electric resistance. The bridge tells him how many miles away that break is. Strung along the .line through the mountains are the trouble hunters. They are quartered at ranches and emergency cabins, about six miles apart. The wire chief takes the key and summons the linemen just west of the break. A muffled figure on snowshoes, weighted down with 30 pounds of climbing irons and tools, pushes out into the storm. An hour later, perhaps a day later, this same lineman climbs some pole that leans into the abyss. The wind lashes him with a thousand stinging whips. It pounces upon him like a beast of prey and seeks to shake him to destruction. The lineman “cuts in” his little pocket telegraph and, bent low against the shrieking wind, calls his chief. “Chief? This is Smith from Heldrfdges. Wire O. K. here. Anything more? ’ “Huh? Yes, pretty nasty here. Been a mountain Hon following me through the brush all morning. It’s so close now I cart smell -its pesky wet hide. Guess he’s waiting, doyn At the foot of the pole for his breakfast. "Shoot it? So I would if the cuss would come out into the open and fight” - Then the lineman splices his wire, descends the pole and plods on to some fresh break the “bridge” has located, or, if he la very lucky, back

home to dry out and warm up, ready for the next call. To the linemen it has ceased to be a miracle that a man in the perils of the wilderness may cling buffeted to a pole and chat with men sitting warm and safe a hundred miles or more away, taking his instructions as the problems arise, getting word to cheer his lonely trail. ■ Perhaps the most unusual incident of this sort is told by the Post-Intel-ligen'cer as occurring a few years ago to a telephone lineman in the Cascades. Connecting a break in the line he was working just beneath a trembling avalanche. Without warning the snow slid upon it. It might have been his own voice or the shrillness of his whistle that disturbed the mountain’s equilibrium, or perhaps nothing greater than the snapping of a twig. Whatever it was caused the slide; in a second’s time the lineman was buried. When he dug his way out of the drift he saw at a glance that his trail to safety had been swept away. So delicately was the snow poised above an abyss that he dared not cross it. But by some miracle the line remained unbroken and a few feet of the pole yet protruded from the drifts.

Rescued From Avalanche. The lineman did the only thing possible—climbed the pole and cut in his portable telephone. He reported his plight and settled down to wait for help. Throughout the long day, while the storm raged about him, he talked to the operators in the towns. It needed all a man’s courage and endurance to cling to that pole and wait, wait, wait. Few men could have done it, and fewer still could have done it without-the stimulus of the friendly voices that came to him across the wires. Rescue did arrive at last. The res' cue party paused at the edge of the avalanche, They saw they could not cross on foot. There was a consultation. Finally they rigged up a bos’n’s chair, the little portable seat which linemen often hook across the wires and slide along on as they work between poles. In this rig hung to the wires a volunteer ventured out across the. avalanche. He brought back Iris companion, half dead from exposure. Nor is it always the men who suffer. Sometimes mountain linemen are married. There is the story of Mrs. N. B. Mayo of Laconia, a good example of what the women have to endure. The Postal Telegraph company has line patrolmen all along its right

of May through the Cascades. One of the stations is at Laconia, at the summit of Snoqualmie pass. The winter of 1912 will long be ren embered by mountain railroad men and mountain linemen. It 'brought "snows that tied up traffic of all sortsr Trains were stalled everywhere by the big drifts Rotaries got lost and buried by the slides. One freight train ’was'llTteT'Bodily off"its shelf on the mountainside and thrown into the bed of the Snoqualmie river at the foot of the cliff by a snoysllde. Lineman Mayo went out into one of the worst storms of that January. Wires to the east of his station had gone down and it was his job to get them up. When he left the storm was at its height, but it was his job to keep that line open. A railway man and a line patrolman are alike in one thing. In times of stress they have an obsession stronger even than religion—come what may, the line must be kept open.

So Mayo, who Is a husky young mountaineer, kissed his wife and three babies good-by and, strapping on his snowshoes, stepped outside the door of his little cabin at Laconia. When he had shuffled ten feet from the door he was lost to the sight of those anxious watchers in the tiny home. The wife turned back to her housekeeping and the care of her babies. And the snow fell. The day passed and the night passed and the snow fell, but the hours brought ho word from Mayo. The drifts rose above the windows of the little house at Laconia. No longer could the doors be opened. Imprisoned by Snow. Another night and another day and the snow falling steadily. The railway was tied up and the rotary crew worked all hours. There was no idle man or woman to dig paths for Mrs. Mayo or even to see how she fared. Now tlffe snow was above the' eaves of the little house. It was quite dark inside and the wood was running out. The wood pile was ten feet from the back door, but it might as well have been ten miles. Worse still, the snow had pushed open both doors and the woman could not close them. A week after Mayo left J. L. Coyle, district foreman for the Postal, got to Laconia. He knew the general direction in which the little company house was located. Looking across a plain of white he saw a tiny black speck, the gable end of a roof. A little curl of blue smoke marked the spot. It was there the lineman’s wife was waiting word of her husband. When Superintendent Coyle arrived* at the home and dug his way in he found the last of the fuel had been put into the stove. He brought the first word that Mayo was safe but storm-bound at the next station east of Laconia. He had been there a week, called to safety by orders- of the wire chief. That was one time that the line stayed down a while and at least one woman won’t forget It for a long time. Four years ago Lineman W.-Hull was stationed at Wolf’s cabin on Lake •Keechelus. Somewhere to the east the wires went down. The snow Was deep and still falling. Hull got instructions to locate the break. He got Wolf to accompany him. The two started east on snowshoes. The wire chief, watching his board at Seattle, noted a second break in the line not long after the men left Keechelus. The bridge showed the new break to be behind the men. They were cut off from communication east or west, somewhere out in the storm. Ben Hunegardt was the lineman at Easton. He was sent west with a helper. At noon the helper turned back. j. “You may be a fool, but I’m not going to have toy fyiends standing around and saying, ‘Don’t he’ look natural,’ after they find my body,” he declared.-

“All -right, Bill; good 7 by,” said Hunegardt briefly. He set his face to the storm and shuffled on. Refuge in Deserted Cabin. 4 Night came and the storm closed in about him. He stumbled forward. It was past midnight when Hunegardt made out a dark shape in the snow. It proved to be a portion of the roof of a deserted cabin. The weight of the snow had crushed in one end of the building. The gable of the standing end, which also held the fireplace chimney, stuck bravely above the drift. Hunegardt burrowed into the drift and, crawling under the wreckage, reached the unharmed portion of the cabin. He started a fire in the fireplace and stripped his socks to dry them. Sitting in the warmth he grew drowsy. Fight as he would he could not keep his eyes open. When he awoke with a start he found that morning- had dawned. The fire had burned to ashes on the hearth and his socks had burned with it. Sockless, Hunegardt thrust his feet into his heavy mountain shoes, strapped on the snowshoes and set out again, his face to the west. At about eleven o’clock that morning he found Hull and Wolf in a deserted cabin, where they had taken shelter. They had broken a pair of snowshoes and were helpless prisoners' of the storm. They weren’t alarmed. They knew help would come. These aje but a couple from the thousand and one tales of winter nights. Linemen tell them before the snow. They are part of theirj'shop talk.” To live these adventures and to return to tell them over constitute the “fun” of a lineman’s job. Whether they return to tell the talq or whether they perish in the doing they have but one ambition—-to keep the line open.