ivan

aLl YoUr CrAg$ 2 B3lOnG 2 u$!!!

meh. them sylvan slavs' tortured souls render even the most mellow bivy a hellishly introspective horror-show - might as well put up camp on something sharp n' prickle and have reason for the hate

this thread suddenly got a helluva lot more interesting

career ending? fred beckey's older than henry ford n' still climbing - you ain't contemplating jumping off the chief, are ya?

it's easy to sleep if you don't give a fuck about being alive

yet another beautiful bright blue meteorite streaming towards alpa-centauri, but ya gotta lay off "splitter" n' "shredding" or run the savage-risk of getting lumped in w/ that john muir word-mangler i think i speak for the group when i commend ye for yer exploits and wish you god-speed in serving us up some more

9/20 - deo XXXIX - II laps for XIV towards XXX for the season, half-way bitzes, even as september sags sadly towards fall - the leaves on the wing, the thick lead sky-cloud ever lower towards dusk - fat gray raindrops on the windshield on the way-back - bunches of them bastard elk down the crick, bugling all the damn evening - jim n'an old-time vantucky friend round the base - kenny and a right curious feller from way-back east on the corner - a quick blow-by for the first lap, then a pause and some great goddamn gut laughs w/ them on the ledge - tales from the land of way-ago - pickens n' roanaoke n' hickory n' fucking appalachia 'n general discussed upon winter is coming

i know that, if you have anything beyond a day-pack on, you WILL get hassled and asked for an overnight permit if you're on the stuart lake trail 'round business hours - a soul-foul of funk and a bottle-full of gin in you helps finagle the conversation for sure

b/c they know what happens when you go pig-wrassling?

for better or worse, expecting a climber to be enthusiastic about increased ranger presence in the hills is pretty much like asking a republican to get stoked about a whole bunch of new taxes most people go to the woods precisely to get away from society, it's bad-noises and its rules, no?

9/18 -#38 - full-moonlight ascent of the corner w/ geoff - the weather god's relented after gray and damp all week - a full cast of clowns in addition to ourselves, their leader did a helen-keller style ascent of cruising to start lovely night - calm - the high moon on the river, the ripples hypnotic

i still can't understand how you fellars lost the cold war

easy - somebody else's - that way i don't have to worry about replacing it every coupla months

in russia, mountain climbs YOU

kind words, surely, but, if i've had little but negative experiences w/ climbing rangers in the past, why should i be happy to hear there's soon to be more in my backyard? i want to like everybody n' anybody, but guns n' the power to fuck folks over for damn near anything makes that awful hard

"wise sir do not grieve it is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning for every one of us living in this world means waiting for our end let he who can achieve glory before death when a warrior is gone that will be his best and only bulwark"

9/17 - day 37 - 151st anniversary of the worst day in american history, why not court my own bold disaster? work done at 3, i walked to the parking lot, licked my fore-finger n' thrust it up into the air to measure the mendacious breeze - the augors were awe-fucked - purple piss in every direction, but maybe, just maybe, i could squeeze in a lap? wife n' kids not home until 6 at any rate, i had no reason not too, and figured a hike up the trail or even just a book-worm sesh in the red-devil would suffice to chase away the inevitable tuesday-blues, should i arrive to find it all a'cock-billed i've long held you can climb a hundred days at beacon and each day have a new distraction - this day it was a curious chem-trail on the 1st pitch - like the shimmery trail of a slug in morning, but strait up and down the full height to snag-ledge, and harder and cruncher than any slug-juice i've seen before - that and the merry martial site of what certainly appeared to be two apache attack helicopters making the dance of death up and down the gorge surprised to find the first lap of the day so dry after all this grim grayness of late, i figured on a second when i reached the trail only for the heavens to open and the rain to fall eagerly on this fell-earth - back at the car i had a leisurely 40 minutes fumbling through rick atkinson's robust apogee of awesomeness, the guns at last light - the rain raged on the rooftop as i made my own private anabasis, ambling through the penultimate tale of a near-dead generation - then it cleared and the mist moved off - a second lap then and all for the better - the lead out the pencil, i pushed off for home and hearth and the Promise of a Better Tomorrow 13/30 laps for the year now

i had a postive experience w/ a climbing ranger once. once.

yeah, more kops in the hillz!!!!

pts for future community service sentences

east ledges certainly aren't bad, but do require care, as you say - mostly i suspect people feel more comfortable w/ the devil they know and figure the way they came up wasn't so bad - i've come down both ways, and only managed to mangle meself on the east option

was it a cc.com poster?

i've never understood why it doesn't get the same amount of traffic as blownout it's a shame flying swallow's last 2 pitches aren't at ground level too, as they're spectacular, but i never seen anybody on them

plenty of nice folk out there, and while i typify the mediocrity mentioned above, there ARE some extremely strong folks getting off the beaten path too i, for one, like to see folks ('specially when they're not butt-ugly old guys) making their first trip to the bacon-wand and having fun on a classic route ('specially when they leave booty behind ) if you liked young warriors, come back and give jill's thrill or right gull a whirl.

i think kenny's capital crime here was the lack of emoticons knowing that old boy, he was just having a friendly laugh - afterall, that muthafucka lost more cams out at beacon than anybody and for a guy's who done the corner a gazillion times, he could probably place a good bit less gear too