“……there was a great glacier run,” Hemingway wrote. “forever straight if our legs could hold it, our ankles locked, we running so low, leaning into the speed, dropping forever and forever in the silent hiss of the crisp powder. It was better than anything else.”

During the winter of 1974, Hemingway’s impact on literature and writers had yet to be fully realized. The tourists had yet to leave Cuban cigars, empty shell cases, or glasses of red wine on his grave in the Ketchum Cemetery. The Nature Conservancy had yet to purchase The Hemingway house that overlooked the swimming hole upstream from the Warm Springs Bridge but now sat empty and haunted beneath a leaking roof.

I wonder, in the scheme of a state budget, if trout are less valuable than forests? It takes years to grow a big rainbow and a helicopter with a bucket could easily fly the breeders to nearby spring fed streams. But the Fish and Game is as stressed as the fish and need to balance the cost of helicopters against the loss of these big fish, their public relations value and the number of tourist dollars they bring to Idaho.

We come to the dove blinds by way of a dusty dirt road that passes small, stuccoed farmhouses where sleeping hogs litter the front yard, horses sleep on their feet in poor corrals and gauchos push cattle off the road to allow us to pass.

Two hundred miles north of Petropavlovsk, the salmon appear in late August. Starting as a whisper, their numbers rapidly grow in volume until the river pulses with Silvers, Chums, Sockeye and Kings flooding agains the current.

The moon is said to affect the blood in the same way it pulls at the tides and I wonder if, while finning beneath the dark over hung bank, Browns feel the same quickening, that betrays a need to breed and feed.

Knees have always been a cyclist’s nemesis, the weakest link in a dependable power train. Like a pitcher’s shoulder, or a runner’s hamstrings, when knees fail…game over.

I have watched the riders for two decades. In that time, the bikes have grown lighter, more complex. Carbon fiber frames, electric gearshifts and perfectly spaced cassettes where the chain flows seamlessly from one cog to the next, all serve to shave ounces and increase power.

He did not know why he found it more comfortable to sleep with his hands raised to the ceiling. A doctor claimed his shoulders had been separated then separated again until they now slid in and out of their socket like worn eight balls at a Gooding pool tournament

Standing on a boulder in the middle of a nameless river that swirls like hot oil, I am surrounded by rising Speckles–brilliant, broad backed fish that, until this moment have never seen a dry fly.

Rock. The man liked the name. Defined by hard consonants with the barest nod to a minor vowel, the Jack’s name conjured a short, tough, light middleweight who could take a punch.

Zermatt’s Matterhorn has gained a reputation as somethlng of a walkup, an exhilarating hike to 4500 meters. As recognizable as our own Statue of liberty, its profile dominates ads for watches, cars, butter, jam, chocolate and cheese.

When a quarter inch of plywood is all that stands between a granite boulder and a cold swim, a collision that will simply scuff the bottom of a rubber raft will sink a wooden drift boat. Even a glancing blow from one of ten thousand submerged growlers will splinter the Sapeli.

From a distance Suicide Point resembles an outlaw’s weathered face. Disfigured by the trail’s gray scar running across nose, cheek and jaw, in September’s 100 degree heat, its 800 vertical feet serves as the last major barrier to Gracie Bar.

Muskies are ambush fish and, as such, are both extremely territorial and cannibalistic. The biggest defend clear, quiet water filled with submerged weed beds, sunken stumps and logs. Lying in wait for hours, they’ll attack fish, frogs, snakes, mammals, ducks or, less often, feet and hands that are carelessly dangled off boats and docks.

Stirling Moss, who raced Maseratis in the 1950s and ’60s, said “I only know about cars and women………..and I can’t see one thing bad about this car.”

The Bruneau most resembles a punch drunk prize fighter of the same name, staggering across Southern Idaho’s high desert.

It appeared as if an enormous pillow had split a seam and dumped a million tons of prime goose down on Targhee’s glades, bowls, gullies and back country extreme.

Arnold Schwarzenegger on skis is a force of nature. It is his expression that speaks volumes–the Terminator’s single-minded sense of purpose that refines the image of a 225 pound, six foot two, granite boulder bouncing from edge to edge.

Photographer Gary Brettnacher introduced me to British Columbia’s deep powder and wild Steelhead. It’s a gift that continues to haunt me forty years later.

Turbulent winds sweeping Salmon Ranch’s rock cliffs have downgraded the short dirt strip into a dicey uphill landing and as he lowers the flaps for final approach, the horses stampede toward the far fence line, the plane flashes over the river, Dorris cuts the throttle and we sink.

 He has been knocked unconscious and now moves like wet liver, slithering around moguls, pausing on the odd flats between them before seeking the next gutter and sliding around the next mogul.

Pepper Spray is a witch’s brew of ground cayenne and propellants guaranteed to make ursus horriblus wish he’d never laid eyes on homo sapien. “Use in short, timed bursts,” the instructions read.

Over the years I’ve had heard myths of snorkel deep powder but, having never personally skied it, I was convinced that snorkels were simply sight gags––props photographers employ to make a foot of powder imitate five.

To ride the Bataan, you need big guns–buttocks like cannonballs, hamstrings as thick as bridge cables, cordwood for thighs and massive striated calves.

Why Flims? Or, for that matter, why Switzerland? Because there is something about Switzerland’s vertical Alps, crystalline air, chiming church bells and incredible skiing that leaves you touched by magic.

It worries me that Robert, my thirteen-year old son, has no fear. Studying the Aiguille du Midi's forbidding blue ice and black rock north wall from the sixty person tram skims, he does not blink when Mark Jones tells him, “People ski that!”

The storm raged through the night and dawn rose to a vaulted blue sky and four inches of fresh powder. The conditions will haunt my dreams, but dampening that joy is the realization that each turn counts a minute until I must leave.

From Bucharest to the Castle Bran to the Tihuta Pass, I discovered Dracula in the sound of footsteps in the Seven Citadel’s locked towers and in the wet shine of fresh blood spilled across white marble steps at the Golden Crown.

I watch Glen and Darren boot up a narrow, north-facing chute to the 13,330-foot summit of Mount Emerson. A camera cannot capture the forty-five degree pitch or the width or length of this chute. A camera would flatten it out, make it appear as dangerous as a city sidewalk flanked by brown stone walls.

Studied from the helicopter, the warm morning sun has ripened corn snow across two hundred and fifty thousand acres of bowls, chutes, ridges, glaciers and cliffs.

It was early afternoon when we climbed into the Mackenzie boats below White Bird. Tying on Wee Worts and Hot Shots we were still within sight of the launch ramp when Mick’s rod suddenly arced toward the dark water.

We did not expect to catch anything that early morning in January. The guides who met us in a greasy spoon couldn’t promise we’d get a bite, much less land a fish, but they were willing to try if we’d be ok waiting for a fight that might never come.

Decades of salt air exposure had painted a patina of rust over the Model 11’s original bluing. The stock was scarred and loose, the forearm checkering was worn and the rubber recoil pad was brittle with age.  

A flash of yellow squirted through the grass and I am blistered by the acrid stench of burning tires. Other than profanity, there is no describing the skunk’s blindingly strong smell.

“When you hear this rattle again, turn around and walk carefully away.” I told the boys, who begged me to grab the old rattler and stuff it in the cooler.

Koa and Makaha traced their ancestry to Kaimana, Hawaii’s first Royal Rooster. The shining black Cock had finished his second molt when he was taken from the King’s farm on the Marquesa’s island of Nuka Hiva and caged aboard a seagoing canoe for the perilous voyage north.

Earl Holding had given three interviews in fifteen years. I figured there would be little or no chance he’d sit down for a fourth. When my land line rang on a late winter day, I didn’t recognize the voice. “Wally said you’re a straight arrow.” Earl Holding greeted me. While I tried to maintain a journalistic distance, in all honesty, I was flattered.

At night after the dishes were cleared, the old duck hunters sat and reminisced about other seasons when the north winds blew or the fogs shrouded the rice fields and the ducks piled into the decoys for reasons known only to mallards and widgeon.

For tens of thousands of years, altitude and isolation helped protect the Snake Range’s Bristlecones. Then, in 1964, while studying the last ice age on 13,000 foot Wheeler Peak, a University of North Carolina doctoral candidate broke his boring tool in what back packers called the Prometheus Tree.

When high pressure builds over Greenland and low pressure stalls south of Iceland the resulting collision explodes above the West Fjords in a blizzard that crushes visibility and punches avalanche warnings into the red zone.

This is not what I expected from Arizona. Not snakes in caves, or war shirts with power or snow that blows over your head.

Prior to December 25, 2019 a major dump amounted to two feet in two days. Not two feet in eight hours.

Dave Ashby’s future beckoned from the knife edge ridge of New Zealand’s Grand Divide. To reach it, he needed to navigate through the Fox Glacier’s labyrinthian crevasses.  

The road to La Grave is sheltered by concrete sheds and stoplights to restrict travel when avalanches drain from distant and unseen cirques. More than the slides, however, it is La Meije’s extreme, unpatrolled terrain that discourages all but the crampon and guide pack crowd.

Torrential rains followed a series of deep powder storms. When the rains stopped, temperatures plunged to ten below locking Sun Valley's Bald Mountain beneath a glistening layer of boilerplate. By race day, the course amounted to five hundred vertical feet of ice bumps divided by a slick zipper.

I still can’t say what possessed me to climb into an aging Aeroflot M1-8 helicopter with 23 Russian skiers, their skis, packs, a case of vodka and 650 gallons of AV gas. As Vilyuchensky, one of Kamchatka’s hundred plus volcanoes rapidly expands beneath the starboard wheel, I hope that Alexander the pilot aced his last check ride.

Watching the unbroken snow rise to meet me, I realize that much of my adult life has been defined by Bald Mountain. Without the influence of expert runs that plunge from its broad ridges, I might have spent my life in the pursuit of more worldly, but far less rewarding goals.

It is the first week of March and everything from plagues of rats, locusts and killer bees to smog, cyclones and black ice is being blamed on El Nino.