Slush fun is not bred in the bones

THE BLEEDING ISN’T BAD. THE WIND IS ONLY HOWLING occasionally, leaving wide gaps of snowy silence. I slog and scrape my way beneath the pines. My breath billows in the thin, cold air -- 8,500 feet above sea level. In my pack lies enough food for just one meal. No matches. Snowshoes heavier by the hour.

I stop to flop on a granite boulder, gobble my last sandwich, gnaw on a carrot. The next few hours will make all the difference. I think of Jack London’s woodsman in “To Build a Fire,” doomed on a Yukon trail at 75 below, cradling his biscuits beneath his shirt to keep them from freezing....

Yes, readers, things look bad. But I’m gonna live. Because when it comes to cheating cold, there’s no place better than Southern California, and there’s no better cheater than me.

We Reynoldses have a single family tradition: We recoil from cold. For three generations, across the breadth of the continent, we’ve been recoiling.

My paternal grandparents started their family in a wooden house in the fishing village of Small Point, Newfoundland. No electricity. By 1920 they had half a dozen sons, who kept warm at night by slipping stove-heated rocks under the covers. The building blocks of life were chill wind, icy rock and the frigid Atlantic. (Summer, as I understand it, lasts 20 minutes, during which movies like “The Shipping News” get made.)

When the chance came to flee, my father’s father brought the clan across the border and resettled in Connecticut, where locals luxuriate in summers that can go on for a few hours more. This was better but not good enough.

From there, my father spent his life migrating south and west. With me and my mother (another New England refugee; travels with an electric blanket at all times), he landed in southernmost Southern California. No skiing, no ice-skating. He rests now in a cemetery that gets plenty of sun and looks down on the San Diego shoreline. If the family continues on this course, my grandchildren will dwell in Guam, where America’s day begins.

And more power to them. In Guam, it’s unlikely a boss will ever step up, as mine did the other day, and say:

Go get cold.

Aye, aye, I said. And started scheming to cheat.

At 8 a.m. I climbed into my car, drove 100 miles east into the desert, then stepped into a large glass-and-metal hatbox. Massive gears ground, and I was carried through air that got steadily thinner and cooler. When the box popped open, I stepped from the Palm Springs Aerial Tram onto a high ridge on Mt. San Jacinto and pulled on snowshoes.

I have done a little cold but always in short bursts: a hike at the edge of Grey Glacier in Chilean Patagonia, teeth chattering in 50-mph gusts; a few hours of sliding behind sled dogs under a Colorado sky; skiing and snowboarding and snowshoeing here and there. You couldn’t call it sport, exactly, but 10 months ago, I stood for an hour in zero degrees outside a New Hampshire ice rink, a dull ache invading my digits, waiting for a chance to shake the hand of John Kerry.

The breeze bit deep. The candidate never showed. Parts of me turned blue that afternoon, and I believe it was them that tingled with vengeful joy on election night, about the time Florida and Ohio turned red.

Given a choice, I like it hot. I’m the guy who shuffles around Baja in the soupy August air, who climbs that big red rock in the middle of Australia in the middle of summer. Without directions from any boss, I once drove to Death Valley on Labor Day weekend and played several innings of Whiffle ball on the salt flats at Badwater in 117 degrees. And I know I’m not alone.

Millions of you, my neighbors, have clawed your way here from colder climes. Your blood is thinner now; your glove box is ice-scraper-free. You hear -- and perhaps read -- about those who seek cold to feel fully alive, but you and I know this is like eating bugs to keep your taste buds sharp.

Now consider the snows of San Jacinto. They’re a fairly thin blanket now, unlikely to kill or maim you. For a shivermeister, almost no fun at all. But you stand by a three-foot snowdrift and look down, and the hot, dry desert floor sprawls before you, a mile and a half below.

You see the street grids, the palms in orderly rows, and then the landscape leaps and roughens as the mountains suddenly jut thousands of feet, until they reach up to where you stand, in another climate entirely. And when you’ve seen enough, you turn and plod through a shady patch, your breath visible, snow and conifers and boulders for company.

I hike maybe four miles, a sack lunch on my back and no need for matches because, hey, the trams head down to the desert every half hour and the ride takes all of 11 minutes.

Apart from a toe rubbed bloody by an ill-fitting boot, my winter’s journey is flawless and mild as warm milk. Just the way I like it.

By midafternoon, when I line up for the downhill tram, the temperature on top is up to 60 degrees. (I picture Jack London’s woodsman again, this time stripped to his sealskin Speedo and still sweating.) By 2:30 I’m down the hill and racing west on I-10.

The truth is, I could take this freeway straight to the beach. I could jump out of the car as the sun is setting, bound into the Pacific and earn that ultimate California merit badge, the one-day snow-and-surf. I have means and opportunity. But you know what? That water’s probably 59 degrees.

I’m going home. And even though I never met Grandpa Reynolds, I can see him smiling.

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To e-mail Christopher Reynolds or to read his previous Wild West columns, go to latimes.com/chrisreynolds.