The Great Outdoors : It’s All Indoors at the Anaheim Convention Center, Where You Can Go Just for the Halibut or to Book the Trip of a Lifetime

Hardly anyone sees Bertha without stopping.

“The first question everybody asks,” says Ed Jones, one of her guardians, “is, ‘Is it real?’ ”

Indeed it is. At 7 feet and 296 pounds, Bertha is a showstopper at this weekend’s 28th annual Anaheim Sports, Vacation and RV Show.

She also is Dick Powers’ most reliable employee. Powers owns the Whalers’ Cove Sportfishing Lodge on Admiralty Island in southeastern Alaska. He says Bertha never calls in sick, takes a coffee break or complains about being overworked. She just sort of, well, hangs around.

Another question asked is, “Why are both eyes on the same side of her head?” But Bertha takes no offense.

Bertha is a Pacific halibut, caught by one of Powers’ guests, Ross Lewis of Riverside, in July of 1989. She isn’t the largest halibut ever caught in Alaska, not by about 60 pounds.

“We caught about a half-dozen over 300 pounds last year,” Powers said, “maybe three dozen in the 200-pound class and 100 pounds we catch almost every day.”

But, with Lewis’ permission, Powers thought Bertha might be good for business. So he had her skin-mounted so he could take her to outdoor shows, and there she hangs, day after day, luring potential customers to the booth.

“My wife asked me, ‘Just how much did it cost you to have this mounted?’ ” Powers said. “I told her, ‘About a thousand dollars.’ And she said, ‘I don’t want to hear another thing about my leather couch.’

“I said, ‘Now wait a minute, this brings in business. That leather couch doesn’t.’ ”

Does your child need a challenge? The Skinner brothers of Wyoming are at Anaheim with a suggestion: a wilderness survival course.

Most students are teen-agers, but they will take boys and girls from ages 10 up and in three or four weeks teach them to ride a horse, build a fire, rock-climb and generally live off the land, on their own.

“We get kids from all over the world,” says Bob Skinner, one of four brothers who run the Wilderness Survival Camp at Pinedale, Wyo., south of Jackson and Yellowstone along the Continental Divide. “The only stipulation we have is that they have an interest in the outdoors.”

The Skinners also organized the Wyoming Centennial Everest Expedition that in 1988 took 36 climbers to the world’s highest mountain.

The school costs about $60 a day. The Skinners have been running it for more than 30 years, building on Bob Skinner’s background as a survival and rescue instructor for the Air Force during the Korean War and Courtney’s three trips to the South Pole. Some of their students are second generation.

“Kids nowadays, modern conveniences have robbed them of their outdoor skills,” Skinner says. “They don’t know how to handle an ax. We have to teach them the care and use of cutting tools. Suddenly, they are pressed into learning those things.”

How many armloads of wood are needed to keep a fire burning all night? How do you catch fish or small game if you didn’t bring a fishing rod or gun? How do you build a shelter? How do you float down a river if you don’t have a raft?

The Skinners will show you how. For some, it’s a culture shock. The first thing new arrivals notice: No TV. Home is a tepee. Horses must be groomed and fed, firewood chopped, meals cooked.

“All of a sudden they’re learning to live on the ground, learning to live among animals,” Skinner said. “In three days you have homesickness, then in another three days they’re so caught up in the activities and excitement of it that we have to make them sit down and write letters (home). We get phone calls: ‘We haven’t heard from our daughter--or son. Are they still alive?’ ”

Graduation is a four-day trip into the Bridger Wilderness with only small backpacks. Food is foraged along the way.

“We see them growing to accept responsibility,” Courtney Skinner said. “They gain a tremendous amount of confidence and maturity.”

The least expensive RVs at the show also are the most unusual: the Argo amphibians.

Not recreation vehicles in the usual sense, the 6x6 and 8x8 models are little more than fiberglass tubs with fat tires and 18-horsepower Briggs & Stratton engines, like those on large lawn mowers. But they’ll go almost anywhere.

“It’s an alternative to a 4x4, a snowmobile and a small boat, all in one unit,” says Tom Tomlinson, the West Coast representative for the Canadian manufacturer.

“It’s slower than a snowmobile, but will take four to six people while a snowmobile carries one. It’ll take a 45-degree angle straight on. I’ve found very few places a 4x4 can go that we can’t go.”

As long as you aren’t in a hurry. Wide open, the Argo will putt-putt along at only 15 to 20 m.p.h. All-terrain vehicles--the four-wheel motorbikes known as ATVs--are much faster but also carry only one or two people and aren’t quite as stable.

The Argo isn’t street-legal, but it can cruise directly from land into water and out again without changing anything. Afloat, its wide-lug tires become paddlewheels, achieving a speed of 2 1/2 knots. The speed can be boosted with a 10-horsepower outboard mounted on the back.

The vehicle, built by Ontario Drive & Gear Ltd. near Toronto, has been on the market for 25 years but never heavily promoted in Southern California. It’s used on beaches and sand dunes and by duck hunters, fishermen and big-game hunters. A 1,000-pound carcass can be carried across the back.

Government agencies “use them for spraying mosquitoes all over the West,” Tomlinson said. “Last year we had some real heavy snow in the southern San Joaquin. PG&E; had a snow cat go down--fell through (the ice). They went in with an Argo and got the men out.”

Base prices are $5,560 for the six-wheeler, $8,000 for the 8x8. Options include convertible and hard tops, boat racks and tracks that slip over the tires for heavy snow. Test-drive one at your local swamp.

If it has fur or feathers and lives in North America, it has probably been shot by Gerry Lamarre. But it never felt a thing.

The Castle Rock, Wash., wildlife photographer has hundreds of his prints for sale at the Anaheim show and will give seminars on his craft tonight at 6 and Saturday at 9 p.m.

Lamarre has pictures of creatures that some people will never see--and they’re all in focus. His secrets?

No secrets. Anyone can do it--anyone with patience, a lifetime of learning about wildlife and $10,000 for the right equipment.

“You have to buy some big Telephoto lenses,” Lamarre said. “You can’t start out with the mirror lenses or the 200s with converters. It never comes out. (Lenses of) 300 (millimeters) up is what I recommend--good, solid lenses, straight Telephoto, 2.8 (available aperture).”

The next step is finding the wildlife.

“If you don’t know how to hunt, you can never be a wildlife photographer,” Lamarre said. “It’s the trained eye and knowing where to look.”

Wildlife needs food and water, so that’s a good starting point.

Once located, care must be taken not to spook the creature. Lamarre stays downwind and seldom uses his motor-drive. It’s quieter to advance the film by hand. He doesn’t often use a tripod to steady his cameras, but more mobile rifle stock mounts or monopods.

To avoid camera motion, he advised: “Use your body a lot. You can shoot at a sixth of a second holding your breath and using your body as a brace.”

He wears camouflage clothing and uses tree stands and blinds.

“It’s just like hunting, (except) ou have to get a little bit closer.”

Owls and cats are the most difficult to photograph, he said. With mountain lions, among the most reclusive of animals, “You use a blind and decoys. . . . You bait them, use a predator call and have a good setup so they can’t smell you.”

Once he has the animal in his sights, he says: “I always try to have the eyes in focus, with the animal looking at me.”

Sometimes, being armed only with a camera is risky.

“I’ve been charged by grizzlies and moose,” Lamarre said. “I try to have an escape route. I was photographing a cow moose and a calf from 100 yards. The calf got between me and the moose, and the cow decided to charge because the calf started toward me. She didn’t want me there. She chased me down in two feet of snow. I barely got away.”