Adventures 3 Bruneau, Chimbulak, Middlefork
Southern Idaho’s Bruneau River
Staggering across Southern Idaho’s high desert, the Bruneau most resembles a punch drunk prize fighter of the same name, It picks no straight course but twists and turns through the sage covered plains creating a chasm into which tributary canyons discharge their burden of red mud when the spring thunder storms rage from horizon to horizon.
Mount Elbrus, Skiing With the Soviets
My key to Russia was a Soviet climber named Vladimir “Comanche” Lukiaev—a friend of a friend, who has traveled from Moscow to ski with me. A local Balkar legend claims Elbrus hides her face from sinners. If that is true then Comanche must be the purest of heart, for riding the base double chair up Cheget, Elbrus shines dazzlingly in the distance.
Fly Fishing the Middle Fork
Only a guide who has feathered a drift boat around rocks or scraped over a basalt ledge realizes that wood is neither durable, nor forgiving. It may not be this trip, or one later this summer, but next season when a rock punches through the plywood or the boat stalls on a wave and in Bukowsky’s words, “Fills with water so quickly, one second you’re high and dry, the next you’re fighting for shore.”
Quebec City, Heroes In The Streets
Dressed in a leather jacket that resembles Renaissance armor, the figure crosses the wall and watches the peloton disappear around a corner. Covered by a tricorn hat, he has a determined jaw, dark serious eyes and tight black curls that fall to his shoulders. Another actor? Or Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville–Canada’s finest soldier inspecting the City’s defenses….as he has inspected them for two centuries.
Night at Grizzly Lake
As soon as Russ and Vito reached camp, they described how they’d just started to rig their rods when two grizzlies came charging down the shore. “It happened so quickly,” Vito remembered, we had just enough time to drop our gear and run.”
The kids looked at each other. “Grizzlies?” Andrew repeated.
Huge Kings, Creamed Corn
Under the best circumstances King Salmon are difficult to hook and harder to land. The forty pound weight and power of the fish strip knots, break tippets, eviscerate reels and occasionally shatter graphite rods. Once hooked the Kings shake and porpoise against the rod’s resistance.
Sea Kayaking Across Yellowstone Lake
It was a fine, blue-sky day with just a hint of rain in the stratocumulus that lifted above the ancient caldera when my son’s Andrew, Robert and I arrived at Marina Bay where guides Mark Harbaugh and John Cole were waiting next to the power boat that would carry us across the lake to Yellowstone Lake’s South Arm Wilderness
Hike into Hell
I included Andrew at the last moment. Born in Sun Valley, and educated on the ski runs and back country trails above it, he could hike for miles without complaint. Then too, there was the obvious appeal of sharing not only the adventure but the hardships of the trail with my oldest son.
BMW Winter Driving School
Until I gripped the 328is wheel, I planned to raise hell. I wanted to rip open the envelope--exceed the limits of common sense and skid pad G Forces until the bank loomed inviolate, unavoidable and solid in the right passenger window.
Surviving the Birkebeiner
Why would I ever want to close my fifth decade with this anaerobic holy grail of unrelenting climbs, heart in your throat downhills and, on this, the Birky’s 25th anniversary, 8,000 overrevved cross-country skiers who mark time as BB or AB—Before Birkebeiner or After Birkebeiner—a single defining day to measure all great events: births, deaths, marriage and career.
Diary of a Deer Hunter
For the past hour Andrew and I have been climbing a shale and quartz spine toward a huge buck that is brousing slowly across a high, sage filled bowl. To reach his sanctuary in the deep, north facing fir, the buck will have to cross a shallow depression just below us. We have barely reached a rocky outcrop when the heavy horned muley stepped into the open.
Four Corners on Two Wheels
Twenty six years had passed since Peter Dent found me laying face down in a Naples camp ground. It was 1972, I was touring Europe on a Norton Commando and had eaten a bunch of unwashed grapes. I was still convulsed by dry heaves the following morning when Peter wandered over, studied my red Roadster and inquired, "I say chap, having a bit of trouble here?"
The Haute Route
The High Road. This classic ski trek from Saas-Fee to Chamonix France is well named. Records exist of ski mountaineering in the Bernese Oberland as early as 1850, but until January of 1903 when a party of six Chamoniaird alpinists pioneered the route from Chamonix to Zermatt, primitive equipment and early ski technique discouraged winter attempts.
Donner Summit’s Road Warriors
Laying down a mix of salt and red sand, after twenty-three years with Cal Trans, Shel Wagstaff warned, "It's starting to glaze up." A moment later, a new Japanese sports sedan blistered by on the right, spun and slammed into the guard rail. Plastic and bits of metal exploded off the front end as the car spun back across the highway, hit a second guardrail and stopped.
Seven Devils to Hells Canyon
Located on the Idaho Oregon border, the Seven Devil’s He Devil, She Devil, Tower of Babel and Ogre rank among the Western Rockies most remote peaks. It was the names, more than the total miles or sobering vertical descent that convinced me that back packing through Idaho’s Seven Devils Wilderness Area down to Hell’s Canyon offered a once in a lifetime adventure.