The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche | 
 enlarge | Author: Gary Krist
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 399524
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0805083294
Dewey Decimal Number: 979.777
EAN: 9780805083293
ASIN: 0805083294
Publication Date: January 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Paperback cover is clean with some edge curling. Pages are clean with no markings. Very minor corner bends.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
“Krist does wonders . . . [He] describes the frantic rescue efforts . . . and the malevolent, unending storm. In a thrilling, climactic chapter, he conjures forth the avalanche.”—The New York Times In February 1910, a monstrous, record-breaking blizzard hit the Northwest. Nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved: two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found themselves marooned. For days, an army of the Great Northern Railroad’s most dedicated men worked to rescue the trains, but just when escape seemed possible, the unthinkable occurred—a colossal avalanche tumbled down, sweeping the trains over the steep slope and down the mountainside. Centered on the astonishing spectacle of our nation’s deadliest avalanche, The White Cascade is the masterfully told story of a never-before-documented tragedy.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Great Historical Book August 9, 2008
This has to be one of my favorite books I have read. At first I was woried that it would just be a story but it has all the historical facts in a style that makes it exciting to read.
The best kind of non-fiction writing August 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is the best kind of non-fiction. The historical rigor doesn't get in the way of the narrative flow of the story, but the narrative flow doesn't water down the historical rigor, either. I think the main reason for this is that the author is primarily a novelist; this is his first non-fiction book.
As he unfolds the story, it becomes an edge-of-your-seat tale of suspense. You can almost hear ominous soundtrack music welling up in the background as the snow falls and falls and falls, the railroad workers make nearly superhuman attempts to clear the tracks so the stranded trains can get off of the mountain, and the passengers sit at the base of a thousand-foot high mountain with millions of tons of unstable snow above them.
While he's telling the human stories, he also explains the background of mountain pass railroading, the economics of the industry, and the technological limitations the equipment of the day created. At the end of the book, he explains the legal issues that arose as a result of the disaster. Most important, he makes it clear that nearly everyone involved made the decisions he made for the best of reasons, even though some of those decisions turned out to be disastrously wrong.
Though the Wellington avalanche is the worst such disaster in US history-- and one of the worst train disasters, too-- in the hundred years that have passed, it has faded into oblivion. The site of the disaster has, too, having been abandoned by the railroad since 1929.
On the one hand, that's just the way it goes; new events push old events into the past. On the other hand, that's a real shame. There are lessons in the Wellington avalanche about corporate responsibility, technological hubris, and government oversight that we might well benefit from.
This book is nearly perfect non-fiction. It's a fast, entertaining read that also teaches the readers important lessons. I recommend it most highly.
History that reads like fiction May 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful book about the train disaster of 1910 where The White Cascade was swept off the mountain by a massive avalanche. Generally I am not into "disaster books" but this one caught my eye because I had been hiking in the former Wellington area of Stevens Pass the summer before. I knew the "end of the story" but wanted to learn more.
I expected to learn something about the regional history and of the railroad in particular (and was not disappointed, but was most surprised by how much life Krist brought to the story. His background information and detail on passengers and workers created the kind of empathy and suspense that I would normally associate with a book of fiction. It is obvious that his research was extensive and that he took the time to learn a different side of people than what we normally see in books of history. The end result is a real page-turner and I found myself staying up all night to finish the book, even though I already knew what happened. I guess in this way the book is like a train ride where the excitement is in journey. I could not recommend this book more.
Excellent read April 19, 2008
Very enjoyable, well documented book. I also enjoyed the early history of railroading and Washington state.
Coleen from Kent, Wa
A Well-Written Story about a Long-Forgotten Disaster March 24, 2008
I must admit that I'm a train buff, and perhaps that's the reason that I enjoyed this book so much. However, Gary Krist has meticulously researched the background information associated with this long-forgotten railroad disaster in the Pacific Northwest's Cascade mountains and has brought the characters that played major roles in the calamity to life in a riveting, true tale of how nature still can wreak havoc with the best laid plans of man. Once I started reading this book, I found it hard to put down, even though I knew what the ending would be before I turned to the first page.
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