Skiers and snowboarders headed over to the new lift, "Cloud Nine Express," only to get caught on the 405 during the morning rush. Thank God for the lunch break and the San Diego Chargers.

By the time the Bolts kicked off at one o'clock, the whole ski hill more or less emptied, except for the women and children and the baffled Euros. At that point, Mammoth Mountain basically turned into California's largest bar. The Jagermeister people ought to give us an award.

Me? I caught the game in fits and starts, leaving wherever I was at the quarter breaks, play reviews and injury breaks. That gave me plenty off ski time, although it caused the usual confusion. What's L.T. doing on the sideline? Where is Rivers?

By the time the Good Guys had beaten down Indy the ski day was basically over but the evening turned out to be just great. The ski hill brought back its Festival off Lights fireworks show over at Canyon Lodge, and it was really fantastic. You could see the show all over town. In a very cool move, the ski hill even lit some chairlift lines, like over at Lincoln Mountain.

That was cool.

Other stuff:

I heard the word "Dude" 4,567 times on Saturday alone.

On one chairlift, I heard a guy say, "I always wanted to be on Ski Patrol, Dude, but I wouldn't want to be helping people all the time, you know?"

On another chairlift, I heard a group scheming on how to get a Mammoth address so they could get the "Locals' Ski Pass." Ain't no such thing, but what the hey?

Chairlift eavesdropping is great this time of year. There's more cluelessness than at a South Carolina Primary. Good times, all around.

Oh, and one last thing. That theory that the new Cloud Nine would somehow ease the jam at Chair 2/Stump Alley Express turns out to have been a pure hallucination. At least so far.

That's it for now. Off to see how the midweek crowd handles itself.

The illegal trafficking of gall bladders from California's black bears is such a lucrative business that it's arguably a bigger profit motive than heroin, all of which came to light this past week when a San Diego man was arrested in a sting conducted by the California Fish and Game.

Huong C. Tovan, 54, of San Diego, was busted up in Redding for attempting to buy bear gall bladders from undercover game wardens.

"The illegal trade of bear parts is a serious violation of Fish and Game law," said the DFG chief of enforcement, Nancy Foley. "The lucrative profits derived from the illegal trade of bear products, most notably bear gall bladders, entice poachers who risk felony convictions."

Many bears are poached solely for their gall bladders and paws resulting in the wanton waste of the animal. "The awareness by most Californians of this illegal and disgraceful practice often aids in the
investigation and arrest of bear poachers," Foley said.

Bears are the only species with a gall bladder that produces fairly large quantities of bile, or bile salts -- an ingredient that has been used in traditional Asian medicines for as long as 3,000 years.

It is reported to cure a number of ailments, including cirrhosis of the liver, high blood pressure, jaundice, diabetes, heart disease, fever, headache, hemorrhoids, severe burns, and tooth decay. It also is used in health care products such as shampoo, and as a food delicacy.

While synthetic forms of UDCA (the active ingredient in bile that has been proven to have some medicinal qualities) are available, there is a tradition that indicates the cure must come from nature to be effective.

Prices for bear gall bladders are astronomically high in some countries — in Japan, gall bladders can sell for $1,500 to $4,000 each.

A bear gall bladder is approximately the size of a human thumb, and is virtually indistinguishable from the gall bladder of a cow or a pig in its dried, "fig-like" state. Fakes have flooded the market, leading some people to go to extraordinary lengths to obtain authentic gall bladders.

This has led to an increase in poaching across North America and Russia. Having the bear killed before your eyes ensures that the gall bladder is the real thing.

Fish and Game wardens received an anonymous tip through its CalTIP (Californians Turn in Poachers, 1-888-334-2258) hotline that a San Diego area man was soliciting bear hunters in Shasta County for bear parts, prompting the start of an investigation in October 2007. Wardens in other western states reported receiving similar complaints. On Oct. 8, a sting operation was conducted against Tovan in which he purchased bear gall bladders from undercover California wardens in Redding.

Wardens obtained a search warrant from a Shasta County Superior Court Judge for Tovan’s vehicle and residence in San Diego, which resulted in his arrest on several counts of felony trafficking in bear parts.

Tovan was transported and booked into the jail in Shasta County where most of the violations had occurred. The search and seizure of evidence revealed an accomplished bear gall bladder processing operation. It is suspected most of the bear parts were bound for Southeast Asian countries.

Purchase or sale of bear parts are violations of the Fish and Game Code and prosecuted as felonies. Convictions are punishable by fines up to $5,000 and up to one year in state prison or county jail.

Mammoth's cops came across the latter last week. Maybe the guy was bummed over the snow situation. Or the 13 percent bed tax. Or USC's season. Or he could have been one of those people in the lottery to get one of those 10 new liquor permits and just got tired of waiting. Who knows?

So this guy was staying at an motel that was not identified in the police report. He was so polluted he could not leave his room. The motel people freaked out, natch, and called Mammoth's Finest.

What they found was a dude whose blood alcohol was .57 percent -- a historic high for Mammoth, and that's really something. Not even the boys involved in the Whiskey Creek parking lot fracas a couple of weeks ago came close to that.

No snowboarder on record ever matched it; no dirtbag did either, or anybody else who has come reeling through our town.

It was truly impressive.

The police say .37 percent is lethal, and levels of .45 percent are fatal to nearly all people.

So here's to Motel Man. Bottoms up, and keep it on the level.

Meridian, which runs from Old Mammoth Road up to Chair 15. is more like a runway. It has four traffic lanes, no sidewalks to speak of except up by the golf course, and it has a preposterous traffic light at Minaret Rd. It's a boulevard in the same sense that U.S. Hwy. 395 is a boulevard.

Meridian has a 40 miles-an-hour speed limit and no sidewalks, so the moms with their strollers, the dogs with their humans and the pedestrians with their sneaks have to dodge drivers who are often generous in their interpretation of 40 miles an hour.

In 2009, though, sanity might make a stand, right there at the corner of Meridian and Minaret.

The traffic light is going to the intersection of Sierra Park and Lower Meridian, near the High School.

A roundabout will replace the light.

Sidewalks will be installed.

The road will be narrowed from 64 feet to 45 feet. Under the scheme, there will be just two lanes of traffic and a center turn lane.

Omigod! Meridian is about to become a boulevard!

In a report in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, Al Zamudio, a former Fish and Game warden, said his supervisors assigned him to watch Searles.

"I spent a lot of nights following Steve," Zamudio said. "My lieutenant told me to keep an eye on him. If I caught him doing anything illegal, he said he'd buy me a steak dinner."

This ain't right. It's not right in Mammoth, it's not right for our sense of right and wrong, and it's not right for our town's policy of cohabitation with wildlife.

This stinks.

In the Times article, veteran reporter John M. Glionna pressed the issue.

"Asked about the surveillance, Fish and Game spokesman Steve Martarano would say only: 'If there's suspicion of a crime, we'll use it. It's how we catch poachers in the wild.'"

This is preposterous stuff. Steve Searles a poacher? Holy Moses. Is DFG crazy?

Finally, the spy game ended -- we think.

"Zamudio reported that Searles was actually saving the agency work. 'They waved me off. To them, Steve was a wacko who didn't know what he was doing,' he said."

I know Steve Searles and he's no more wacko than anybody else up here. You want wacko? It's the DFG, out to bring him down as a matter of policy. If I were Steve, I'd sue. Using government employees to tail an honest citizen -- one who is doing public service, no less -- in the hopes of entrapping him, is just so appalling that I don't even have words for it.

It makes me want to throw up.

Who are these guys, anyway?

In the high country, the colors are granite gray, flecked with the muted rusts and yellows in the meadows. On most mornings now, the lakes have little whiskers of ice around the edges.

It's a perfect time for one of the best easy hikes and climbs around: The Mono Pass trail and Lembert Dome.

The hike up to the top of the dome is lovely right now. You look down the spine of the High Sierra, feel the wind, take a few gulps of air and suddenly, you're human again, all senses clicking.

Take a ramble out the trail, the highest trail in Yosemite, and if it weren't for the overhead jet traffic, you'd think you were the only person in the world. This is deep meditation.

Nobody's in town, to speak of; just locals and wildlife, and it's so quiet that even the birds are in a state of hush-hush. The sun is low and yellow, backlighting everything. The moon is bright and makes the dustings of snow in the mountains sparkle.

Yeah, six weeks away is a long time, particularly if that time was spent in heavy urbanizing.

I can't think of a better place to return to than Mammoth, really. Especially at this time of the year.

Bike jerseys are great, especially when they're worn by a girl with pink hair, like Nat, from San Francisco. Her jersey, black with pink graphics, depicted a woman cyclist, bent over her drop handlebars, presumably pedaling furiously. And by the way, the woman cyclist on the jersey was depicted as very well endowed and naked as a needle.

We liked Nat a lot, and we also liked the woman who rode by in a South Park jersey with "Oh, Man, You Guys SUCK!" on the back. Everybody got a good look at that one, on account of she was one of those athletes who can dust anybody she wants to. I volunteered.

One woman rode with a RAGBRAI jersey. RAGBRAI is too complicated and majestic to get into here, though.

Greg Lemond rode by with his son, Todd. Todd's jersey wasn't interesting, but all the girls behind him were. They left drool marks on the highway. The girls, that is. Greg Lemond wore a charcoal gray jersey with nothing on it. You wouldn't want to call him boring, but maybe one of his three old yellow jersey from the Tour de France might have been nice.

When we got to the end of the course, we ran into Sam Mudie, the chieftain of the Sierra Cycling Foundation, which put on the ride along with the Eastside Velo Club of Mammoth.

"Hey Sam,!" yelled I. "Seen a Cranky Old Bastard anywhere around here?"

Sam said he had not.

"How about a pink girl?"

Nope.

It's all in the timing in these kinds of things.

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We've got lots of people who dump and run in the middle of the night, leaving trash bags next to -- not in -- dumpsters all over town.

We've got restaurant people who are careless with their trash.

We've got rube tourists who actually feed the bears, hoping for a picture they can take home or just for the thrill of seeing a 400-pound creature.

At the Lakes Basin, we've got bait fishermen who bring to the shores coolers stuffed with food, and if they leave that site for even five minutes, our Harvard-educated bears descend on the coolers, and sometimes that ain't pretty.

Some second homeowners whose estates are near condo complexes have no problem using the condos' trash bins, making them overflow.

Plus, we've got some visitors -- a lot, actually -- who have no idea how to open bear-proof bins, so they just leave their garbage by the side of the dumpster. People-proof dumpsters.

Aiyee! A "bear problem?" We don't have one. We have a people problem.

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"To see skies truly comparable to those which Galileo knew, you would have to travel to such places as the Australian outback and the mountains of Peru."

We'd argue that the Eastern Sierra ranks right up there, which is why the Night Sky ordinance that the town has put in place is so critical.

Here's Owen again:

"Excessive, poorly designed outdoor lighting wastes electricity, imperils human health and safety, disturbs natural habitats and, increasingly, deprives many of us with a direct relationship with the nighttime sky, which throughout human history has been a powerful source of reflection, inspiration, discovery and plain old jaw-dropping wonder."

Well, duh!

Up here in Mammoth we know that. We understand that. Somehow, not enough of us get it, though. "Security lights," which almost never work for their intended purposes, are proliferating around town, which is why the ordinance was crafted in the first place.

Here's Owen again:

"My friend Ken Daniel is a lighting designer. About a decade ago, he told me something that changed the way I think about the night. It was early evening , and we were sitting with some other people in an unelectrified barn on Martha's Vineyard and looking out at the ocean, and he observed that we were doing something that Americans almost never do anymore: watching it get dark.

"In the early nineteen-nineties, Daniel worked in Los Angeles and he and his family lived in Glendale. His wife, Gina, told me that the street slights and other lights in their neighborhood were so bright that their bedrooms never got fully dark at night, even though they had curtains.

"When the Northridge earthquake struck, in 1994, the first thing she noticed after the shaking had awakened her, was that she couldn't see.

"'The earthquake had knocked out the power all over the city, and everything was black,'" she said. "'When we got the kids and ran outside, we found all our neighbors standing in the street, looking up at the sky and saying 'Wow'."

Ain't we lucky, though? Up here, the night sky is a constant source of wonder and inspiration.

So turn off that danged light, OK? Dig the sky.

The New York Times on Friday, Aug. 3, splashed Mammoth on the front page of its travel section under the headline "An Old Ski Town Faces The March of the Wine Bar," and of course the implications are enormous.

First of all, who knew that wine bars could march?

That aside, is everyone around here used to flat vowels and Yankees caps?

Contemporary art? Theater every night except Mondays?

We could inundated by vacationing playwrights looking for Malaysian cuisine. Or worse. Hedge fund managers looking to offer us endless tips on the chairlifts.

On the other hand, our bagels in town might improve; men might start wearing shirts with collars; there won't be so much of that darned eye contact; people will be able to use their car horns.

The actual story is OK, with nothing new for those of us who are here. "This could have been written in 1998," observed Judy Bridger, and this time she wasn't lying.

It's the fact that the "other" Times has now discovered Mammoth was the news, though.

We're wondering what it will be like, with the conversation turning toward "Stowe vs. Mammoth, Whose Art is Better?" and stirring Bertolt Brecht into our coffee.

We could be done for.

Last weekend, a strong group of Mammoth locals made the trip to Markleeville, Alpine County, for the famous Markleeville Death Ride. It's a 130-mile "adventure," in the words of Eastside Velo Club poobah John Armstrong, in which the strongest of the strong make a one-day jaunt over five mountain passes, climbing 15,000 vertical feet.

Death Riders are crazy, in their way. But they're so goldanged Mammoth about it, that is to say larger than life, it makes a guy like me really proud.

To guys like me, a "mountain pass" is waiting around for a women's bike club to pedal past in a pace line, drop in on the back of the train and make conversation (heh) until it's my turn at the front, then I drop off the line altogether and wait for the next one. Call me a scamp and I'll admit to it cheerfully.

San Diego women's pace lines are the best, in my opinion. Berkeley's women's pace lines will up the ante and drop you like a stone. Scheez already, huh?

Anyhoo, the Mammoth "A" team took just seven hours to do the thing. Jerry Oser, the climber-unicyclist nut from Rovana, clocked in just under seven hours. Whew! He was followed by Scott Busby, Dennis Phillips and Tim Standifer, who, by the way, celebrated his 51st birthday this past week.

The Eastside Velo "B" team followed in around eight and a half hours. It was led in by Jeff Byberg, Doug Howell, Dave DeVries and Tom Wallace. The team was almost derailed early in the day by a three-legged legged bear (ain't that a kick?) that crossed the highway directly in front of our boys while they were doing 35 miles an hour down the hill into Markleeville at 5:30 in the morning. Yipes.

Armstrong, meanwhile, Kiwi'd his way over five passes, too, while Barb Phillips and Shawna Pettigrew completed four. Jim Pettigrew completed three passes.

They're all nuts. Hats off to them.

The goofiest thing about the Mammoth riders is the way they innovate.

Glenn Miyata from Footloose was along the way to wrench the bikes into shape, but the kicker was Lynette Armstrong.

"She used her dental skills to clear Speedplay pedals of debris," marveled her husband John.

It was a tough ride.

Temps were at 95 degrees. And of the 3,000 riders registered, only one third of them finished five passes.

They get up at 4 a.m. in the Turtle Rock Campground accompanied by loud music. This year the song was "Morning Has Broken."

"It's hardly the way to get up for 10 hours on the bike," said John Armstrong later.

But that's why I love these people. They'll plow through anything. Even songs.

1. No whining. Everyone knows that this isn't summer; it's construction season. Big trucks. Hammering. More hammering. Table saws. A little more hammering. If you're looking for quiet, try Upstate New York, which overbuilt itself many decades ago.

2. No left turns. It's hard to believe that Mammoth can have traffic problems. After all, most of the streets are as wide as airport runways, and stoplights remain something of a novelty. That's actually the problem. SUVs stack up chockablock behind the one Hummer driver who will wait forever to make a left. Be a sport. Turn right and go around the block if you have to.

3. Beware the Von's lot. With three big rows of straight-in parking, pedestrians trying to get to the actual store have to walk behind the vehicles. These drivers frequently can't see the peds on account of the configuration of the lot and, natch, because the vehicles next to them are carrying loaded bike racks and are the size of the Queen Mary.

4. Buying booze. Mammoth got tagged big-time by the state last spring for selling alcohol to minors. The Shell station on the corner had its license suspended for a month, causing much hardship. The upshot of this is that the two Shells are now ID'ing everybody, and it doesn't matter that you're a self-admitted geezer bait fisherman who looks 105 years old. Gotta have that ID.

5. Bears. Bears are cool. Bears around here are docile. Bears are really hungry, too. Don't feed them. Bears aren't the smartest of God's creations. They might mistake a child's fingers for steak fries. And one thing about a bear: it's not a vain creature. It sees no joy in having its picture taken.

6. Old Mammoth Road. Hey take it easy, will yez? People live out there. Actual residents. There's enough trouble with all the construction out there. Speeding traffic just exacerbates the situation and causes the locals to engage in untoward behavior.

7. Hole No. 1. The first green at Sierra Star is only about 10 feet from a walking path and Meridian Blvd. There's a screen to protect the peds, but approach shots still land regularly in the area. This is because first-time golfers can't grasp the notion that at 8,000 feet, they are about one club too long. At least. Anyone who parks on Meridian across from the first green is out of his mind.

8. Heat. There will be no complaining about the almost total lack of air conditioning in town. For anyone here last week, this fact seemed unbelievable. Deal with it. Go higher.

9. Fire. Humidity fell to 11 percent last week, according to my spiffy personal weather station. Combined with a low snowfall from the winter, this place is a tinderbox. Keep those cigs in the ashtray and the spliffs put out thoroughly. This is particularly aimed at the Mean Mountain Run participants, whose Harleys run on a peculiar combination of gasoline, nicotine and testosterone.

10. Be nice. It's not that goddam hard to be freakin' nice, for Chrissakes.

But what the heck. It was entirely appropriate, too. The Sierra's population has more than doubled California's average rate in the last 10 years as pressure from the cities keeps on its relentless path. Projections indicate that that population will double between 1990 and 2020. Housing prices doubled between 1997 and 2003; smart planning in many mountain towns is stymied by local interests colliding.

Somehow, all these factors, all these numbers, all these facts, coalesced under the smoky umbrella of the Angora fire, which raised the grain on development, economies, education and planning. What are we to do?

The Sierra Conservancy attended the press event, too, along with some old pals like Glen Martin, the fine environment writer who just recently left the sputtering, gasping, clueless San Francisco Chronicle.

The State of the Sierra report contains no surprises. Its proposed roadmap for the future likewise contains no surprises.

But it's a darned good read for everyone.

Get it here.

"Hiking," said he, "is a vile word."

Muir lifted his arms and marched across the stage, imitating the kind of hikers he just doesn't understand.

The art of the mountains, he said, is in sauntering, which is a wild leap from hiking. Go where your legs want to go. Climb to the top of a tree and sway in the wind. Pack light. "Why do people always think they need a roof over their heads?"

The coot was a hoot.

Some people in the audience thought that Muir bore a resemblance to one Lee Stetson of Mariposa County over on the West Side. An hour upon the stage, hardly anyone wasn't convinced that this guy was the real thing, though, right down to the thick Scottish brogue.

People need a guy like this to wander in through town from time to time, or else we get all jaded and busy and lose sight of what's plainly in front of our faces: a beautiful spot of the world.

And hey thanks to the Bird Chautauqua people. That event just keeps getting better and better.

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One was named Panther, from Florida. The other was named Pink, from the Bay Area. They'd been on the trail since late April, when they began on the Mexican border, headed for Canada. We ran into them after spending the day fishing the San Joaquin above Upper Soda Springs campground.

They were ebullient.

"The (PCT) Class of 2007 is the luckiest class ever," said Pink. "I never planned on this."

Low snow levels across the High Sierra meant there was very little hiking across the difficult snow fields that frequently have stopped through hikers in their tracks.

They arrived in Mammoth ahead of schedule, with clear weather, great trail conditions and in fine health.

There was only one thing on their minds as they piled into the Bumpmobile for a ride to town: Movies.

They said they were interested in sleeping in a bed and taking a shower, of course. But what was showing at the theaters?

The last time we saw them, on Main Street headed downhill, they were hell-bent on making the evening Ocean's 13 and Pirates of the Caribbean showings at the Minaret Cinemas. They walked resolutely and with purpose, as if it were their first day on the trail.

On the line was something the rest of us take for granted.