Mountains

CODY, Wyo. - The drive east of Cody is through high desert, and the February weekend of my visit was bitterly cold. But I was wearing a heavy down coat, snow pants and boots, and riding in a cozy, warm SUV. That's not how nearly 14,000 earlier visitors had arrived in Cody. They came by train from California in late August, and they weren't wearing down or fleece, nor did they have a comfy hotel room awaiting them. They were among the 100,000 Japanese Americans relocated from the West Coast to the interior of the U.S. at the beginning of World War II, shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

It's 100 miles by car between Aspen and Crested Butte . But if you're fit and would rather hike between these two famed Colorado ski towns this summer, the trek is only 11 miles and takes just six hours. Better yet, it promises meadows filled with wildflowers and stunning mountain vistas. The folks who run Aspen's Limelight Hotel say many of their guests are adventurers and aspiring mountaineers. So the hotel is introducing a way to explore the local mountains with the new Aspen-Crested Butte Package.

Los Angeles Times THERMAL, Calif. - Maria Mendez watched from the front stoop as her 2-year-old daughter toddled back from the ice cream truck down the street, clutching a brightly wrapped treat in her tiny fist. It was a simple, joyful moment for a young mother who rarely let her little girl out of the house just a few months ago. That's when they lived in Duroville, a ramshackle mobile home park choking with dust, the stench of busted sewer lines and noxious smoke billowing from the neighboring dump.

MEXICO CITY - They scheduled a World Cup qualifier for the plains north of Denver on Friday. What they got instead was a new Winter X Games sport. And though we're not sure what to call it yet, we know what it shouldn't be called: soccer. By the time the U.S. finished off its 1-0 victory over Costa Rica, players on both teams were plowing through ankle-deep slush chasing after a yellow ball that, more often than not, seemed to get caught up in snow drifts. Well-struck crosses thudded quickly to earth, well-timed passes stopped far short of their intended targets and grounds crew members, shovels in hand, repeatedly rushed the field during play to uncover the touch lines, the penalty area and the center circle.

Elysian Park near downtown L.A. is a huge space containing great networks of trails and commanding broad city and mountain views. This introductory walk might make you a regular visitor. The stats Distance: 2.5 miles Duration: 1 hour Difficulty: 2 on scale of 1-5 Details: Dogs on leash are OK, but not bikes. Ample parking on Stadium Way, Elysian Park Drive. 1. Begin at the trailhead and walk uphill, past the big swing gate, into a grove of eucalyptus trees.

Skiers and boarders, don't put away your gear just yet. Mammoth Mountain ski resort announced this week that it plans to stay open through Memorial Day . "With storms predicted in the coming weeks, it's entirely possible that Mammoth will stay open much later [than Memorial Day]," according to a statement from the ski resort on Thursday. So far March has brought 27 inches of snowfall to the mountain. The resort reports a current base depth of 83 inches at the main lodge and 183 inches at the 11,053-foot summit.

TRAVEL Presentation Ava Waits will offer tips on healthy travel to Europe and what to do if you need to see a doctor or pharmacist on your trip. When, where: 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Admission, info: Free. RSVP to (626) 449-3220. MT. WHITNEY Workshop Experts will offer tips on preparing to hike Mt. Whitney, including the permit system, coping with high altitude and taking alternative routes to the top. When, where: 7 p.m. Wednesday at the REI store in Arcadia, 214 N. Santa Anita Ave. Admission, info: Free.

FT. BRAGG, N.C. - For the last 11 years, the U.S. military has stuffed bases in Afghanistan with Humvees and bullets, radios and radars, armored vehicles and surveillance balloons. Army Maj. Gen. Kurt Stein has less than two years to move $48-billion worth of weapons, gear and equipment back home. Before U.S. combat troops leave at the end of 2014, Stein has to figure out how to transport 35,000 vehicles, 95,000 shipping containers and mountains of other war materiel out of a landlocked, mountainous country in the middle of a war. It's not the first monumental moving job for Stein, 54, a burly former enlisted man with 37 years experience in military logistics.

Monday morning's magnitude 4.7 earthquake in Riverside County was the largest temblor to hit the Los Angeles region in three years and has produced more than 100 aftershocks. It caused no major damage, but it was felt over what seismologists said was an unusually large area. The quake was initially recorded as three separate temblors because a foreshock tricked seismograms into recording multiple quakes of multiple sizes, said Susan Hough, a USGS seismologist. Earthquakes of a 4.7 magnitude are typically felt only about 120 miles away from the epicenter, but Monday morning's quake traveled farther, shaking coffee cups as far as Los Angeles.

Claude King, 90, a country singer-songwriter who was best known for the 1962 hit "Wolverton Mountain," died early Thursday at his home in Shreveport, La., where his family found him unresponsive in bed. King was one of the original members of "Louisiana Hayride," the Saturday night radio and TV show on which Elvis Presley got his start and Hank Williams Sr. performed. The show transformed country and western music from 1948 to 1960 - "Hayride's" heyday - with music genres such as hillbilly, western swing, jazz, blues and gospel.