Eric Umphenour looked down the back side of the mountain and nodded, almost as if to reassure himself. "We'll just drop over the side here and work our way around the ridge. We've done it before, lots of times." From my perspective, it looked like the start of an Olympic downhill ski run--straight down, although instead of glistening powder the surface consisted of a gray and white jumble of slippery, snow-covered shale. But there were Dall sheep below us, five white dots on a patch of coal-black rock, and when you've dreamed of hunting sheep for 30 years you don't question the guide. You go over the side.

The first step was a doozy. It wasn't quite as steep as it appeared, but the shale was as treacherous as advertised. We descended as fast as we could, sliding and skidding to a large rock outcropping 400 yards above the sheep, where we looked them over again with the spotting scopes.

One of the bunch seemed to be a winner; trouble was, the terrain between us and the rams was too open to try anything. But thanks to the lovely weather we'd been enjoying--snow, rain and dense fog that had kept us confined to our tiny tents for the most of the previous 24 hours--we didn't have to wait long for the next fog bank to spill over the side of the mountain and hide our next move.

We worked behind the sharp finger ridge on which the rams were bedded. Periodically peeking over the top, we were nearing the end of the ridge when Eric motioned excitedly for me to move up. I crab-walked over to find a full-curl ram feeding just 35 yards away.

"When he looks up, don't move a muscle," Eric said.

The ram lifted his head, stared at our immobile forms for a moment and went back to feeding. Then, thinking better of it, he trotted up the ridge to put a bit of distance between us. He stopped 75 yards away to look back, and I put the crosshairs on his chest. But I didn't shoot. The ram bounded over the ridge and was gone.

We'd come to the Alaska to film an episode of "Petersen's Hunting Adventure Television," due to start airing this summer, and to my chagrin, Jed, the cameraman, just didn't have time to get set up.

Eric shook his head. "That was a gooood ram--38 inches I'd guess," he said, and I could tell we were thinking the same thing: getting a successful sheep hunt on film was going to be more of a challenge than we bargained for. Dejected, we began the long, arduous trek over the mountain to our spike camp.

We awoke to more fog, rain and snow the next morning, but by 11 o'clock it had cleared enough to go hunting. During our unsuccessful stalk the day before we'd watched a band of 20 rams march in a long white line around the base of the north slope, and now our party of six--me, Jed, hunting partner Wayne Holt, Hunt Alaska guide/outfitter Eric, guide Jaydee Kirby and Jaydee's brother Tony, our cook/packer--set out to find them.

We crossed the mountain via a different route, negotiating two steep and hairy rock chutes in the process, and struck out along a razorback saddle that led to a broad-shouldered peak. We failed to find the big ram group, but in the process we glassed up a pair of rams on a finger ridge. They were gone by the time we got there.