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.

On the Corso Italia, the passeggiata is drifting languidly past the storefronts filled with bright ski suits, gold jewelry, books, film and postcards depicting Cortina draped in heavy snow. This evening ritual provides a fitting stage to meet Cortina’s beautiful people.

Line poured off the level wind reel as, thirty feet downstream, a steelhead tumbled across the surface in frantic splashes of rose and silver. Watching Dan pump and reel, it seemed a miracle that this steelhead had crossed eleven dams in its 1,000-mile migration from the Pacific.

Only 16 at the time, I was hypnotized by the scene in which McQueen steals a Triumph from a German soldier and tries to flee to Switzerland. It did not matter that the Triumph was a Brit bike, or that McQueen eventually slids into a barbed wire fence. From that point on I was obsessed with bikes.