On Feb. 21, 1910, snow began falling heavily in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Snowfall in winter was nothing unusual for the Cascades, but this storm was different. Rather than the usual one- or two-day blast, it raged on and on, dumping snow at the rate of three feet a day on mountainsides already buried under a full winter’s load. Meanwhile two trains, one carrying the mail, the other carrying Seattle-bound passengers, sat idle on a narrow ledge midway down a steep mountainside, waiting for snowplow trains to clear the tracks ahead.
These are the essential dramatic ingredients of “The White Cascade,” Gary Krist’s measured, hour-by-hour reconstruction of a horrifying accident that claimed nearly a hundred lives in a matter of minutes. With a sickening rumble, as lightning flashed and thunder roared, a wall of snow detached itself from the mountainside and flung the two trains hundreds of feet into a ravine. Most of the cars, one witness later recalled, looked “as if an elephant had stepped on a cigar box.” The last of 96 bodies, buried deep under the snow and scattered across the landscape, would not be discovered until the end of July.
The Wellington disaster, named after the little railroad town where the ill-fated trains spent their final hours, held the front page for weeks, and then, like most news stories, it disappeared into the past. Precisely why Mr. Krist decided to resurrect it is the big question hovering over this book.
Unlike the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire or the San Francisco earthquake, the avalanche at Wellington had no historical importance. Although some of the victims filed lawsuits, it had no legal consequences and led to no changes in the way railroads operated or were regulated by the government. Unlike the sinking of the Titanic, the accident did not serve as a lasting emblem of hubris. It was, as the court ruled, an act of God and nothing more. So why return to it?
There is no real answer to this question. Mr. Krist, the author of the novels “Bad Chemistry,” “Chaos Theory” and “Extravagance,” lets the story and its telling make the argument for the book, and they do, despite some formidable hurdles. After all, this is a tale in which snow falls, a mountain looms, and most of the protagonists simply sit. The outcome is predetermined.
Mr. Krist does wonders with this unpromising material, however. Adopting a restrained, documentary tone, he slowly builds a picture of massing natural forces and helpless humanity, brought closer and closer to catastrophe with each tick of the clock. The pacing is expertly judged, and the potentially confusing narrative threads, involving multiple actors in scattered locations, are tied together neatly.
This is a story with a hero. He is James O’Neill, a hardworking superintendent of the Cascade Division of the Great Northern Railway. Mr. O’Neill, a poor boy from the Dakotas, had gone to work for the Great Northern at the age of 13 and had worked his way up the ladder, rung by rung. The moment he heard news that a fresh storm was rolling in, threatening railroad operations, Mr. O’Neill left his home in Everett and for the next three weeks whipped himself and his workers forward, trying to clear the tracks and keep the trains moving. It was his decision to leave the two trains at Wellington where they were, a fatal if understandable mistake.
O’Neill is one of only two memorable characters. Although Mr. Krist introduces several passengers and railroad workers, and traces their fates, they remain ciphers, quickly identified and described in thumbnail sketches, but blurry in outline. Strangely, the most vividly rendered portrait is that of James J. Hill, the skinflint, iron-fisted owner of the Great Northern, who hovers offstage, an unseen but potent presence.
Weather rules events, not its puny human victims. The howling winds and drifting snow become characters in their own right, relentless and all-powerful, frustrating every effort of Mr. O’Neill and his crews. Drifting snow, whipped by the wind, forms banks 100 feet tall. Constant snow slides erase the work of diggers and rotary plows. As temperatures moderate, and snow turns to rain and sleet, the mushy, heavy snow known as Cascade cement settles on ice-hard underlayers, poised to swoosh downward in a vast, annihilating slab.
Trains and the culture of the railroad supply Mr. Krist with his other grand theme. The unthinking courage of Mr. O’Neill and many of his fellow railroad men reflected the enormous prestige of the railroad in American life and the esprit de corps of railroad workers, who saw themselves as members of an elite labor force, the messengers of modernity.
Joseph L. Pettit, the conductor on the passenger train, walked to safety with several of the stranded passengers when hopes of rescue faded. Then he turned right around and returned to his train. He died in the avalanche, leaving a widow and five children.
Dispassionately, Mr. Krist describes the frantic rescue efforts, the mounting fears of the passengers and the malevolent, unending storm. In a thrilling climactic chapter, he conjures forth the avalanche and its aftermath, when railroad cars filled with victims lay buried under a thick layer of sound-deadening snow. In the last car of the mail train, a voice was heard saying, “My God, this is an awful death to die.”
There is no moral to the story. A wall of snow killed a lot of people, and in time, they were forgotten. In the 1920s a tunnel was drilled through the treacherous Stevens Pass, “perhaps the last untamed section of the American railway system,” Mr. Krist writes, rendering Wellington obsolete.
Time took care of the rest, burying the Wellington disaster with the finality of an avalanche, until, by sheer chance, a curious novelist decided to turn back the clock.
