With riches inches ahead in mine shafts or tunnels, men were impatient and work often continued in deep winter snow and sub-zero temperatures near timberline. There was an insatiable demand for mine and construction timbers. Although work was brutal, the rewards were good enough that men such as this fellow at Garfield were willing to risk snow slides and frostbite to snake timber up dangerously narrow trails even in the dead of winter. Miners working underground usually didn’t feel the cold as much, but were faced with a difficult trip to and from work. There was also the chance that while they were underground, the entrance to their workplace might be buried by a snow slide.
Ernest Brownson Collection.