ivan

if i win the lottery before then and can afford the flight

Trip: Vegas Beyotch! - Red Rawks Romp Date: 4/1/2013 Trip Report: spring break once again, that celebrated season of the year - after 3 trips to zion, thought it might be time to sample the classic moderates of red rocks and get out of the fawking aiders for awhile... in brief: day 1 - cat in the hat day 2 - frogland day 3 - april fools on mt wilson day 4 - johnny vegas n' solar-slab day 5 - geronimo day 6 - crimson chrysalis day 7 - olive oil day 8 - calico hillz bouldering and fly back in bitter, stream o'consciousness detail: friday: pre-flight burgers w/ the fam @ red robbins - emergency bomb disposal after my fuel canister set off the southwest lady (perhaps if i just hide it somewhere in the airport i can recover it next week? ) - rendezvous w/ my attorney, half-crazed from his cross-town commute - the flight out - many beerz in the back of the plane - the las vegas strip @ night - madness in every direction - a half-fruitful search for climbing medicine concluded, we retire to our chalet for senior citizens to booze out the back end of the day and prepare for our great red-rawks gang-bang saturday: a sound sleep-in followed by a whole-foods cluster-fuck, then we cast down charleston, hat-on-a-cat bound - a dusty stumble-fuck through the desert after a crazed slalom-fest along the loop road - crowds at the base of course, and half them born during the bush presidency - the second bush - the second second bush term at that - christ, all 3 of their ages together wouldn't be enough for them to buy a beer, and one would be enough to floor the lot of them - the climbing the kidz handled fine - the simul-rap, hanging from their father's johnsons not so much- many long waits on cush ledges, chain-smoking and passing comments with air-force captains, lost louisanians, and random canuckistanians - easy, satisfying clambering to a ho-hum top-out too far below the true summit for a dog-fearing mountaineering man to thole - three parties team up for the rap, all copacetic until a rope gets stuck on the next to last pull - an extra hero-lap for geoff in the dark, sans headlamp - burgundy on the way-back to village view tasty views near the top of the cat in the hat not the worst place to have to sit for an hour while folks figure out that whole rock-climbing thing... geoff on the last pitch (the best of the bunch) top of the first rap sunday: easter, the sweet-chocolate-baby-jesus back from the dead! frogland our plan for the day, and for our sins we were given it - a bumpy-ass ride through the desert in our svelte kia soul - more crowds at the base - kitchy san franciscans made their ascent w/ rabbit-ears duck-taped athwart their helmets - frogland a fuck-sure worthy route despite the waits for your fellow meat-popsicles to finish passing through - fun for the whole family, though shiverish in the breeze and shade frogland on the descent strangers on the fine first pitch my attorney around pitch 3 i reckon mid-lead on p4 - fun face climbing and a traverse w/ a difficult move to reach a prime stance dog-bless geoff, he just let me keep on leading the next pitch had a kewl chimneyish burrow-through to a sweet belay atop the jammed flake the city of sin guarded by an ocean of cacti n' cinders monday: april fools day, and we pulled a doozy on ourselves - solar slab was the plan, and somehow my medicine-deprived mind got it set that therefore we'd be climbing this monster - the best excuse i can manage is, in true dirt-bag style, i'd xeroxed all my beta and been content at the time to make do w/ mega-fucked pictures so, long-story short, we wandered high and low like jackasses for hours through burning sun and bristly plants, building up in me if nothing else a burning desire to return to do the resolution arete someday... we did at least make some new friends on our cactus-cruise convincing ourselves these cairns and this curiously complicated approach somehow fit the approach description, we clambered up a well marked gully for several hundred feet before emerging into a giant ramp system under a huge face that clearly was not part of the fucking game-plan we retreated, i to suck burgundy down in the shade - rummaging around through hill and dale, we then discovered the location of the secret rebel-base, cached our gear in the brush, then beat it back to town to find a medicine man randomly trolling the compound of octogenarians we'd established ourselves in - a little victory in otherwise a day of disaster the walk back to the car - calico hills bathed in brilliant light tuesday: up at dawn and on the road early to the solar slab crowds again of course, but nobody on johnny vegas, so i rambled up the ridiculously featured face, racing to be the first for the pitches above the terrace geoff following p3 we didn't quite manage to beat out the chicks from tacoma, so we took our number and followed behind, caught in the crowd that included an arkansan w/ a glorious goddamn accent n' his thai partner who were doing the sunflower route (a must do for my next return) we eventually teamed up w/ the ladies for the long rap back down, all atwitter to not tangle our lines up - i sense i may have tried their patience - my personality, like my foot-funk or key-lime pie, a bit of an acquired taste wendsday: ole'boy geoff had a hankering for olive oil this day, so i did my damnedest to fuck-up that plan too - with a trail or some sort in every goddamn direction, it don't take much time for a half-wit to get fully fucking bewildered - we ended up at the base of gerinomo instead, and said fuck it, let's just climb this - the tacoma-girls were no doubt thrilled at our arrival behind them again, they having tried to throw off the scent the day afore by telling us they were going elsewhere them dispensing w/ one of the upper pitches - a great route for ledges and easy, juggy climbing on steep stone home early that day, a cacti-cache again completed, i set to achieving a monstrous drunk and suceeded admirably, dreaming of crimson chrysalis the next day thursday: 5 a.m. start, a true miracle - more miraculous still, we arrived at the base of this big bastard w/ no crowd already assembled and glaring at each other a spectacular line, even if it does have some of the hoof-prints of a sport clamber no pics really, my lawyer leaving all the leading to me, he fear-gripped and camera-shy, what w/ the continuously uncomfortable belay stances - a french couple who didn't quite grasp we didn't speak their heathen tongue came up fast behind us, creating quite the cluster-fuck at every opportunity soon enough we emerged into the sun on a cool summitish sorta thang - woulda been the best moment of the trip i'd warrant were it not for the burning pain in my feet and the trepidation arising from the long set of raps to do down the rope-raping face our first rap, well after the frenchies had fucked off, somehow having it in their head they were gonna go down epinephrine that same day a painful walk out for the pair of us, our feet refusing service - for the 3rd day in a row we settled on caching our shit in the boonies in order to be spared a heavily laden stumble-fuck - we'd come back tomorrow and actually find the base of olive oil this time - the trail by headlamp - the harmony of a hundred million frogs croaking in the crick - shooting stars above the hills - constellations considered - the attorney at his business on the phone - a cool desert breeze sucking away my acrid smoke friday: our last full day to climb, we woke late n' hung-over, then heaved out along our well-worn way to the sandstone paradise - no line at the base, and the climbing decidedly easier after the crimson cruise - not a single bolt to be seen the whole way, a true adventure w/o a crowd illustrating the route - fun run-outs, and the last pitch the pick of the litter - geoff here following just past the one-move wonder chimney the best part of olive oil perhaps the descent? high-ball downscrambling at first, then down a veritable stair-case of trippy rose-colored bedrock - a great route for a free-solo? saturday: a phat sleep-in followed by domestic duties - no time for a long route, we settled on clambering in the calico hillz - tremendous fun under the overcast sky, we went up and down to the ridge top over and again, picking boulder problems all along the way - a quaint area, cute and self-contained - how radical to have that in your backyard? binge drinking before the flight, the profits of my huge gambling windfall dispensed with - we arrive at the airport hours early but damn near miss the plane at the bottom of our cups looking forward to the day my way wends back vegas-wards - decadence in every direction, civilized or not as your savage condition might demand! for next time: - anything on mt wilson - epinephrine of course - dark shadows - sunflower

sport climbing in spain? why not in france for the full-on communist experience? i need to move closer to where the real cheap wine comes from....

nice jorb

anyone know if the trail's been repaired yet?

ole'boy climbs at castle crags too long he might start not looking on beatardia so cheerfully, no?

the prison-industrial complex is also doubling quite nicely as a welfare system

i hear there's an awful big spaceship under mt shasta - perhaps you might circumambulate the mountain, chanting along the way, and find a door?

naw, "bags and hooks n' clips" sounds totally legit

the spur is an easy, albeit heady-at-first, descent - helps to have climbed up it previously

*bump* plane leaving in 48 hrs - who's got anything to add?

charles dickens wouldn't know what to write about these days

they might do better manning suicide hotlines - would have some awful practical tips for sure

what does it matter where the blame falls? the world changes and shit gets fucked up in ever newer ways - how does the life of the obese alabama retard w/ no conceivable prospect for a job stack up against the same damn retard 100 years ago? i'm assuming this is the same article i heard on npr this weekend - chick seemed to not quite know what to think either.

thanks christ the nazis didn't have these fucking things

gotta love the invisible hand, no?

shit, most be time for my annual failure on this route!

"look kids, it's everything i warned you about"

naw, that ain't right - i did in fact do the plw route in a day the other month, but i've done the free lunch route on the other sidea couple of times too, mostly recetnly around a year ago - the plw's pretty much all aid, the free lunch mostly not too-hard free (though scary and chossish and w/ several sections of pretty stout climbing, on betterish rock, especially on the 1st and last pitches)

yup, that's it - i suppose st helens is fewer miles as the crow flies, but hood's easier to get to and has slopes right out of the p-lot ideal for your purposes - shit, just tumble out and walk as far uphill as you feel comfortable!

there's a dead hooker solution for ya

okay, my bad, so bail on teddy's after 1 pitch then

2 more subjects for carlin's pay-per-view extravaganza http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/22/georgia-infant-stroller-killed/2008681/

george carlin had a pretty creative approach to this problem i thought the 8th amendment *might* allow it? [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmJ2snsLxWw

nearly got my dumb-ass killed soloing it a decade ago when a cannon-ball sized chunk of ice hit me just below cathedral ridge - hit my thigh and i thought for awhile it had snapped my femur - couldn't walk uphill at all and it was a miiiiiiserable retracing of my steps back to t-line - the best was putting a pic of me, my giant bruise and my infant daughter up here and immediately having it yanked off b/c i looked like a pederast