Postcard from the past: Use Protection to Prevent Snow Blindness

By: Dick Perue

In our neck of the woods, this year’s weather is exceptionally nice and warm compared to previous year’s record snowfall or the weather of more than 120 years ago.

An article in the Jan. 30, 1903 issue of the Grand Encampment Herald notes:

Along the Continental Divide in southern Wyoming, the depth of snowfall has increased to about eight feet on average. The snow, being light, rapidly settles into a solid mass – almost solid ice – and it is generally estimated 10 feet of new snow will settle into one foot of solid.

By wrapping the big mountain range – the Sierra Madres – in such an icy mantle, which often gets to be several feet thick before the winter is over, nature has provided a storehouse for irrigation which defies all of the devices of man. 

Rivulets, 10,000 strong, flow out from under these icy banks to bless the crops in the valleys below, which, if planted in an arid country, would neither sprout or grow were it not for nature’s generous assistance from the snow-capped peaks above.

When the sun shines bright upon the snow in the spring, many victims are tortured with a dose of “snow blind,” which is certainly one of the features of dwelling in snow land that is not coveted.

Snow blind is treacherous and lasting, and victims seldom fully recover. 

It is best to take every possible precaution against this calamity, and the man who is jeered because he puts on the black veil for the day’s trip is not so much a fool as the man who trusts his precious eyesight to the elements.