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By Julia Niles

It was all set. I had printed my itinerary, finished my last round of shots, and packed my bags. I was about to embark on a lifelong dream to travel and climb in Africa when I received this email from my brother:

"Hi Jule, I just wanted to make sure you know about S. Africa right now. 50 murders a day. Lots of car hijackings, with fatalities often. Muggings, etc... Be careful if you're still going. I don't think I'd advise it to anyone. Love, -M"

He forwarded this information to the rest of my family, so there were many more statistics swimming in my head upon arrival at the Johannesburg airport. Between HIV, malaria, violent crime, and the puff-adder, I couldn't figure out how everyone seemed so normal and relaxed. I wandered the airport waiting for Majka, another American mountain guide to pick me up, or for "Q" our photographer I had yet to meet to arrive by plane. Since Majka did not seem to be picking me up, I ruminated on the fact that I really did not know if Q would show up either. I tried to quell the panic that arose from the rare lack of laptop and cell phone. My own thoughts began to amuse me when I noticed people using the ATM's without being robbed.

Q finally arrived- only two and a half hours late. It turns out that Majka e-mailed details about how to get a cab to where she was staying just after I went to bed the night before leaving the country. She had also tried to send a text message with her phone number- but it never went through. So with great relief, I settled into the backseat of the cab with Q on our way to our hosts' abode.

Fuel your creativity -- come and play with our new online tool:

Ad Deadline

Ad Deadline is an interactive tool that allows you to create your own MHW ad. Upload your photograph, write a few lines -- and you, too, could be a advertising big shot.

Oh yes, and there are prizes, too. If your ad wins the contest, you'll get a 1000 dollar MHW shopping spree, and your ad will be featured in Rock and Ice magazine. Four runners-up will receive a 500 dollar shopping spree. Not too shabby.

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By Malcolm Kent

Rocking up to the Ice Climbing World Cup in Saas-Fe, Switzerland, I thought to myself 'what on earth is gonna happen here?'. The World Cup is a truly funny event. A contrived game for a few people who are obscenely mad enough and physically strong enough to take part. There are a list of rules. What you can do and what you can't do. And most interesting of all there is a monstrous climbing structure sitting attached by wires and rope, in the middle of a 12 story carpark on the edge of the town. The town itself epitmomzes 80s skier heaven. No cars allowed within the town boundary, only hideously expensive and overpriced hotels and tons of fake fur.

By William Meinen

After spending several weekends, back to back, bolting the Rehab Wall, Brandon Pullan and I decided it would be nice to get on something a little bit longer. The way I see it single-pitch climbing isn't really climbing. It's training for climbing.

I hadn't been on anything too big since the cast came off, so I was stoked. As I flipped through the trusty guide book I came across the Coire Dubh Integrale:

"An ultra classic mini alpine climb. It combines ice, rock and snow, all at a moderate grade and high quality. Several waterfall ice pitches lead to snow gullies and rock bands. Fossilized rock accepts trad gear in the crack systems. Winter alpine climbing, without the miserable bivy and long approaches that are so common to the sport."

By Cynthia Houng

Spring is the time to catch California's wildflowers. During this narrow window between the winter rains and summer drought, wildflowers put on a spectacular show. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck waxed lyrical over the Salinas Valley's gold-stippled hills. In Steinbeck's time, tidy-tips, California poppies, and other native flowers blossomed in drifts, transforming the South Bay's rolling hills into rich tapestries of color.

This year, ample rains and warm temperatures promise another heart-stopping wildflower season. Our wildflower season typically runs from March to May. Treat yourself to a wildflower hike. You won't regret it.

Track the wildflowers online:

Desert

Anza-Borrego State Park's Wildflower Update -- this week's flowers include desert lilies, ocotillo, lupine, brown-eyed primrose, fishhook cactus, sand verbena, desert evening primrose, phacelia, desert canterbury bells, etc.

Death Valley National Park publishes weekly wildflower updates.

Desert USA aggregates wildflower reports from the Southwestern states.

Closer to home

Here in the Bay Area, the Marin County, East Bay, and Monterey Bay chapters of the California Native Plant Society sponsor guided wildflower hikes and other activities.

Those new to California wildflowers will enjoy the Marin County California Native Plant Society's handy Bay Area Wildflower photo gallery.

Mt. Diablo State Park, located in East Contra Costa County, is one of my favorite wildflower spots.

The park contains a surprising variety of microclimates, from dry chapparel to moist deciduous woodland. In previous years, I've encountered everything from the common (shooting stars (Dodecatheon hendersonii, paintbrush (Castelleja affinis)) to the rare (Mt. Diablo Fairy Lanterns (Calochortus pulchellus)).

If your wildflower hikes inspire you to make room in your garden for California's native plants--and you just happen to live in the Bay Area--consider signing up for the annual "Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour." The tour highlights exceptional East Bay native gardens, and you're sure to come away with lots of ideas.

Valery Rozov, a Russian BASE jumper and climber sponsored by Mountain Hardwear Russia, completed the first BASE jump from the upper tower of Cerro Torre.

Read more about Valery's feat on Climbing.com, and see more photographs on mounteverest.net.

On Sunday morning, Katie Moriarty discovered something very unusual when she began sifting through footage captured by her digital camera. Her camera, operated by heat-and-motion sensors, had captured an image of a wolverine.

Moriarty, an Oregon State graduate student, uses the cameras to track martens, a weasel-like creature that inhabits pine forests. Neither she nor her colleagues at the Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station ever expected to find a wolverine. The last confirmed sighting of a wolverine was in 1922. Sunday's sighting occurred in the Truckee area.

The wolverine (Gulo gulo) is a close relative of the mink and the weasel--and thus a distant cousin of Moriarty's martens. Solitary hunters, wolverines need large swaths of territory to support themselves. They are omnivores, and will sometimes attack caribou, deer, and other large prey. With their thick, lush fur (once prized by trappers), wolverines can survive in a range of cold climates, from alpine forests to open tundra. Wolverines range from northern Europe and Siberia through North America. They were once found as far south as Indiana and Illinois. They were never particularly common in the Sierra Nevada. Francis Farquhar, an early president of the Sierra Club, described the wolverine as "powerful and fearlness and [he] never retreats." In Farquhar's estimation, the wolverine was "not to be trifled with."

Read more about the wolverine sighting.

By Cynthia Houng

From a distance, the trees appear draped with lace. White lace, spun by expert fingers, then looped over the almonds' grey branches in exuberant swags. Up close, it's not lace, but thousands of tiny, delicate white flowers. The almond trees are in full bloom, and the bees are here.

Look carefully, and you will see stacks of small white boxes, no larger than a banker's box. White, rectangular, they house the honeybees responsible for pollinating acres upon acres of almond trees. If the bees do their job, the almond farmers can look forward--provided that the weather cooperates--to a nice, healthy crop. If the bees fail, then hard times are in order.

Almonds are a major cash crop in California, and 120, the road to Yosemite, is lined with almond orchards. Around Oakdale, the landscape changes, and almond trees and processing plants begin to appear by the side of the road. A full 100% of San Joaquin Valley's almond crop relies upon honeybee pollination. In early spring, local hotels fill up with beekeepers, some traveling thousands of miles, coming from as far away as Florida. Some 2,200 tractor-trailer loads of bees arrive in the San Joaquin Valley during the almonds' bloom period. Anxious growers survey the bees--and reject those that they deem too weak to perform their task.

Bees are expensive. The Almond Board estimates that "bee rentals" comprise some 20% of a grower's annual expenses.

Most years, the pollination business is fraught with anxiety. Almond trees bloom early, towards the end of February and beginning of March. Spring rains and uncertain temperatures mean that the bees may or may not have enough time to complete their task before the almonds finish their bloom. Too much rain, too much cold, and the bees sit idle in their boxes.

This year, however, colony collapse disorder has thrown a new wrench into the delicate process.

By Andrew McLean

A little video from yesterday...

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By Malcolm Kent

There have been a few colder days over the past week, but nothing anywhere near close enough to bring back the ice climbing conditions. As we watched the cascade d'arpennaz fall apart, piece by piece we decided it was time to go investigating.

Many years back I had a chat with Ian Parnell and he told me about a crag not too far from Chamonix where you could get in a bit of mixed/drytooling. He called it 'crag-x', which meant nothing to me, but I remembered vaguely where it was. After chatting with Jeff [Mercier], I put 2 and 2 together and figured that we should try and find where it actually was. Jeff's directions led us to a health and beauty spa in Le Fayet. Neither me or Rob could find any sign of crampon marks or tool placements in the ladies' changing rooms, so we figured we were better off walking up the gorge.

Eventually a slightly spooky trail took us to a small rock wall by the river. The crag was called the 'Dry Spa' and the topo told us of a dozen or so routes with French rock grades. It was an odd looking place started by one Mr Bruno Surzac. To be honest, I wasn't completely taken by the place, but at the same time I felt like I was engaging in some climbing history. This was the kind of place where people came to in the early days of leashless tooling in an attempt to train for hard mixed routes, without hacking at decent rock that could be used for sport climbing. Because of that it felt quite hidden and secretive and used by a small number people who were determined to train for mixed climbing all year round on real rock.

By Sean McDevitt

The Return

At noon on Saturday February 15th, outside of Tucson, Arizona, I ran down a dirt road with a thousand other bike racers. I was racing in the worlds largest 24 hour mountain bike race solo; 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo. Can a product developer/designer be competitive with world class athletes? Prepared with months of structured training, seasoned with a year of 24 hour racing, I had come with the confidence that I could do more than survive riding my mountain bike for 24 hours; I was aiming for a top 10 finish.

The Preparation

I am not a full time pro-mountain biker; I have a full time day job as a product developer/designer at Mountain Hardwear. I have fallen into the pattern of doing 3-4 24 solo mountain bike races per year. My training consists of riding 30 minutes to work, riding at lunch for a hour, 30 minutes home then a 2 hour night ride on my mountain bike. I ride 6 days a week, about 20 hours, come rain, sleet or snow. The weeks of rain and abnormally low temperatures have definitely put up the question "How bad do you want it?" As I pedaled my S08 Cannondale Carbon Scalped through patches of ice and snow on the closed road of Mt Abel the day after Christmas, I guess I wanted it bad.

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By Dawn Glanc

It was one week after my accident that I went out climbing again. I still had a black eye and a lot of swelling in my left forearm. After being smashed in the face by a large piece of ice, my climbing head was a bit frazzled. For my first day back in my harness I went to the practice boulder just down the valley from La Grave. The boulder is about 15 meters tall and just about everything is a top-roped dry tool route. It is a fun area to climb. The routes have logs bolted to the walls and logs hanging from the walls as well. It is an intriguing area, like a jungle gym was to all of us when we were kids. I was full of mixed emotions as I approached our objective.

I tied in to our warm-up route and looked up at the challenge ahead with anxiety and pure fear racing through my system. The moments of the accident ran through my mind. The sounds of falling ice and the feelings of blood rolling down my cheek came back to me as if everything was happening all over again. I took a deep breath and turned to Farmer and said, "you got me, are you ready?" He answered with an encouraging "on belay" and I placed my ice tools onto the rock. I took a deep breath and made the first opening moves. My heart was pounding. My forearms instantly began to pump as I over gripped my ice tools. I began an inner dialogue to help myself cope. "Relax," I told myself, "you can do this." As I made each move I was terrified of something going wrong. "You're on top rope" I reassured myself, "breathe." After a long 15-meter battle I made it to the anchor mentally exhausted. My first big step was over and I was glad that it was.

As I lowered back to the ground, I fought back my tears.

More Photos from La Grave

By Dawn Glanc

After taking a week off of climbing, I was a bit restless. My injuries were healing and the stitches had been removed. I was ready to go. The weather here in La Grave was spring like. Day after day the weather was warm and sunny with no precipitation. This would have been a great forecast any other time, however we were trying to ice climb and ski. The conditions for our winter adventures were quickly turning to shit. The snow had turned to concrete and the ice had turned to mush. The entire week I was out of commission I religiously checked the ice conditions web site. A few places were still listed as "tres bonne", so I convinced Farmer and Dylan to go in search of the last bits of ice.

We've been running the Ad Deadline contest since the end of February. I decided to check on our entries today. Here are four that caught my eye. (Click on the image to enlarge the photo.)

From Jody:

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By Dawn Glanc

When you plan a trip to the mountains in February, you plan for snow and cold temperatures. You expect winter conditions especially when the mountains you are planning to play in are 10,000 feet and higher. All my planning turned out to be a futile effort. Not one single snowflake fell for the first month I was here in La Grave. That means from February 9 until March 10, I saw no fresh snow. No powder days, no blissful days of whooshing down the slopes. The snow had turned to concrete and conditions were grim. And then, the night of March 10 came to town.

The night began with some cold wind, then the clouds rolled in. The storm was upon the village and was beginning to pounce on the mountain of La Meije. Snow began to fall. I almost could not believe my eyes. I went to sleep dreaming that I was a great skier. I awoke throughout the night, and to my dismay, rain was falling on the village. When we finally woke in the morning, only a few centimeters had fallen. I still suited up and grabbed my ski gear. This was going to be a powder day, damn it, even if it was only a few measly centimeters.

Farmer works in La Grave as a ski guide at the Skiers Lodge. I went to work that day with Farmer as his tail-guide so that I had a group to ski with. This is not a mountain I feel comfortable skiing alone. The mountain here is not your typical ski resort. The lift starts at 1400 meters and goes to 3200 meters. Then there is a surface lift, or T-bar, that goes to 3500 meters. There are only two tiny piste runs that are each 2-cat tracks wide. The piste runs only go from 3500 meters back to 3200 meters. The rest of the terrain is considered "High Mountain", off piste with no real ski patrol. There are no signs marking the green and blue runs, or any runs for that matter. This mountain and the risks are the real deal.

KING-5 (a local Seattle TV station) gives an overview of Dawn Glanc and Kevin Mahoney's upcoming Fred Hutchinson Climb for Cancer. The climbers will tackle an unclimbed peak in Alaska. Watch the video to learn about the peak's history and see video footage of the peak.

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By Malcolm Kent

Total madness. That's what I think when people say to me 'mixed ice climbing, that's easy, thats just like aid climbing, all you have to do is hang your arms off ice axes'. If only it was that easy. Then routes like 'Steel Koan' would have been repeated, routes like 'Illuminate' would have three or four ascents and routes like 'Jedi mind tricks' would have been done spurless. Oh, wait a second 'Jedi' was almost done spurless. Anyhow, it's not that easy, in fact hard mixed lines, are just that. Dead 'ard.

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Cardboard boxes. Construction dust. Loud noises generated by heavy machinery. These can only mean one thing -- we've finally moved into our new offices.

Moving is always a logistical nightmare. What do you do when you are moving large numbers of people and equipment? Answer: You shut down your operations for one day. But what do you do with all those people?

Some of us took the time off. Others, like myself, decided to take advantage of Mountain Hardwear's generous Gives Back program, and volunteer our services for one day.

Five of us--Valerie, Caitlin, Sean, Adrian, and myself--signed up to work with the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association. The BPWA is a grassroots organized dedicated to preserving and maintaining Berkeley's footpaths.

Sometimes you really do get lucky. The SF Chronicle reports that last month's wolverine sighting near Lake Tahoe wasn't a fluke.

Researchers have released 2 more photographs of wolverines, and believe they have over 50 hair and scat samples. Biologists will compare the samples with skins of California wolverines. If all goes right, DNA comparisons between these skins and the newly collected samples will reveal the Tahoe wolverines' identity. The wolverines' scat and hair should reveal their geographic origins. Until then, biologists cannot confirm that the wolverines are actually endemic to the Sierra Nevada. Some have suggested that the wolverines might have escaped from a captive population. While that is unlikely, scientist can't rule out that scenario without more evidence.

Andrew treats us to a little something from the weekend. Enjoy!

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By Cynthia Houng

How many times have I driven down 108 towards Yosemite, and passed straight through the Sierra foothills? Focused on the mountains, we've seldom stopped along the way. When we have stopped, we've stopped to climb. I don't know the foothills the way that I know the high country. Until recently, I've largely known the landscape as a series of picturesque vignettes, glimpsed through a moving car.

This year, we picked up a book on wildflower walks in the Sierra foothills, and decided to start exploring. One sunny afternoon, we stopped at Knights Ferry, to walk along the banks of the Stanislaus River. We picnicked near the visitor's center, and walked the historic covered bridge, before venturing into a wonderland of wildflowers.

Blue lupines covered the hills. There were bush lupines, four or five feet tall, and there were spider lupines, a small, delicate type with spider-like leaves. A pair of golden eagles circled the water before returning to roost on the cliff. Here and there, we found patches of baby-blue-eyes, California poppies, brodaia (a lily-like bulb with small blue flowers), wild geraniums, purple vetches, and yellow buttercups. In the far distance, dark rainclouds hovered over the Sierras--a late winter storm, gathering over Yosemite Valley.

By Will Meinen

Last year while gearing up in the Yamnuska parking lot with Brandon Pullan, I noticed two older gentlemen who had just arrived in a sweet vintage Mercedes Benz sports coupe. As they got out and removed their alpine-coiled the ropes and circa '70 backpacks, I knew these gents had been around the block. Brandon was quick to inform me that it was none other then Andy Generoux and Urs Kallen. These were true legends in the Canadian Rockies, both with a huge list of significant first ascents.

Half a year later Brandon and I attended an Urs Kallen slideshow hosted by the Calgary chapter of the Alpine Club of Canada. Urs presented "The Bold and Cold 25"; his selection of his 'approved' alpine routes of the Canadian Rockies. Many of the routes were on my tick list. I talked with him after the show and soon he invited Brandon and me over for beers.

Several weeks ago Brandon and I headed over to his house with a case of cold brews. When Urs opened the door, he told us we could save our beers because he had a fridge full of fine imports already waiting for us. As soon as we stepped inside we each received two beers and headed into his 'climbers-only lounge'. As we headed up the stairs, he informed us he had not let many people in this section of his house. As the door opened it revealed a small room in his attic filled with archaic climbing gear, black and white photos of his climbing adventures and book shelves filled with enough climbing publications to fill a small library. Three chairs and a small round table sat at the end of the room. We all sat down and Urs Kallen told it like it was, over the course of our beers.

By Ueli Steck

March 27, 2008 -- Kathmandu, Nepal

During the last past two months I have talked a lot about climbing and alpinism. I was on tour with my new slideshow. Traveling through many different cities in the German part of Switzerland, I gave a total of 45 shows.

Now it's definitely time to get back to climbing. Simon Anthamatten and I have just arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal, and everything is running as planned - more or less.

All our equipment must be transported to the Khumbu Valley. There, we will try to climb Tengkampoche and get as well acclimatized as possible. It's a mountain with a beautiful shape and an impressive north face (approx. 6500 meters high), which has never been climbed before. A lot of work is waiting for us. We are ready to go for it.

The following weeks Simon and I will be busy with climbing. All our thoughts will be absorbed in climbing. From now on, we will be awakened by the words "Milk tea, Sir..." And only afterwards we will have our cup of coffee...