The snow on the ground also settles and thaws every bright day, and freezes at night, until it becomes coarsely granulated, and loses every trace of its rayed crystalline structure, and then a man may walk firmly over its frozen surface as if on ice.

The forest region up to an elevation of 7000 feet is usually in great part free from snow in June, but at this time the higher regions are still heavy-laden, and are not touched by spring weather to any considerable extent before the middle or end of July.
One of the most striking effects of the snow on the mountains is the burial of the rivers and small lakes.
As the snow fa's in the river A moment white, then lost forever, sang Burns, in illustrating the fleeting character of human pleasure.
The first snowflakes that fall into the Sierra rivers vanish thus suddenly; but in great storms, when the temperature is low, the abundance of the snow at length chills the water nearly to the freezing-point, and then, of course, it ceases to melt and consume the snow so suddenly.

The falling flakes and crystals form, cloud-like masses of blue sludge, which are swept forward with the current and carried down to warmer climates many miles distant, while some are lodged against logs and rocks and projecting points of the banks, and last for days, piled high above the level of the water, and show white again, instead of being at once "lost forever," while the rivers themselves are at length lost for months during the snowy period.

The snow is first built out from the banks in bossy, over-curling drifts, compacting and cementing until the streams are spanned.

They then flow in the dark beneath a continuous covering across the snowy zone, which is about thirty miles wide.