ivan

who knows, but i'm betting he's heard of socrates, 'cuz he suuuuuure copies his style (and appears in a movie featuring van halen guitar-work?)

fork. yeah. i'm looking forward to having my shot at the tombstone crack as well after my last chicken-out 'least yer cheater-stick didnt' break mid-pitch!

i see what you did there

Two men enter; one man leave. they didn't need guns in the thunderdome, just chain-saws...

the 2nd amendment only covers black-powder muzzle-loaders - i know, i've been to monticello - nary a non-musket in the house, fucksake!

i wonder what mad max thinks about this very important question? auntie? master-blaster? the wierd guy on the helicopter-thingey?

make that thare guarentee then - no wildlife w/n 50 feet of the front door - let'er hold the propane lantern n' she'll feel even braver might want to review jugging a fixed line above the surface first though

she'd like this one just fine - practically sterile down there - the only signs of life are all of hairless monkeys

but, won't the mud men get you? i have nothing to fear, for even mud men have standards

yeah, that thing is tiiiiits! (well, in comparision to the deadhorse cave - it is of course chilly like all caves, and it's dampish and humid, but unlike the deadhorse there are no huge puddles, roaring rivers, etc. to fuck with) - strong recommendation! spending a night down there would be particularily badass!

so bring yer giiiiiirlfriend down already and let's have another round!

i woulda advocated their inclusion if'n steve had driven his rape-van n' we'd had the space

full 4 part harmony and precious prose available at: http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1042765/Re_TR_Dynaaaamiiite_Cave_A_Bak#Post1042765

there's gps cooridinates if'n you want'em up in the verbage, 'bone. but, in brief, it's in washington state, near trout lake, not too far from hood river and adams. i think folks have been rooting 'round there for decades - some of the anchors are archaic, some are more modern bolts.

In case you didn't notice the last time you looked at your "smith" pass, that thing is actually a state parks pass and will get you into every park in OR too. Except of course for the ones that require the NW forest pass. Or a snow park pass. Or a concessionaires fee. I certainly don't consider OR system to be much better. I guess Washington decided to opt out of that reciprocity thing with the NW Forest pass and just charge everyone through the ass to take a dump or go for a walk? Or did I miss something? Sorry to offend though...I realize you are a rather thin skinned individual. I should have known better ha, few would describe me as thin-skinned! naw, come to think of it, i never have bought a smith pass, day or annual come to think of it, so never had cause to examine one closely - i bought the discover pass b/c the beacon rangers give you a ticket w/n seconds of arriving w/o it and i spend much of my summer out there actually, wa state parks were free till last year, when the budget crisis compelled the congress to stop funding the parks and make the patrons do it directly - sucks, but then it makes the fat sendentary types sad-clown when they have to pay for somebody else to have a hike?

niiiice - EVERYTHING's more epic w/ a western soundtrack

my favorite bit of his from the film: "Well, yeah, man, you see, like, all the tanks we come up against are bigger and better than ours, so all we can hope to do is, like, scare 'em away, y'know. This gun is an ordinary 76mm but we add this piece of pipe onto it, and the Krauts think, like, maybe it's a 90mm. We got our own ammunition, it's filled with paint. When we fire it, it makes... pretty pictures. Scares the hell outta people! We have a loudspeaker here, and when we go into battle we play music, very loud. It kind of... calms us down."

nothing more ironic than an oregonian making fun of your state's retarded tax-structure a year-pass for smith costs 30$ - that much gets you every park in washington

holy shit, how has south park not covered this?

perhaps if you can find an industrial supply of bacon-grease for me to first coat meself in before attempting the squeeze? i would really like to explore where that underground river went, you called it the maze or something like that?

Hardly. you engaging in puns these days 'bone?

Trip: Dynaaaamiiite Cave - A Baker's Eleven Date: 11/11/2011 Trip Report: fall, what season more fair for forsaking the forces of the Upper World by wriggling into a wondrous cavern? last fall was my first shot at playing the spelunker, and it only took a year to process the ptsd psychoses that plagued me for a good while after - coffin walls perspiring, clouds of death-frost hanging about my dark-dimmed head, alone in the halls of a demented Deep God - bastard birth through a cursed, stony cunt - this trip was to be different though, and a damned fine one it turned out to be 'twas rick's 48th bday, and as such he became captain and master of The Plan - we were to assemble a force of 11, on the day of 11/11/11, and commence our assault as near as to 11:11 in the a.m. as modern chronometers could manage - i'd be sure to bring powerful medicine, dangerous juju, my a-game for certain the phuzzy n' me met at dawn at the place most propitious for launching any loony bid, the portland ikea - i shivered n' paced the platform of the max red line, managing a fine pages of "pillars of the earth" while awaiting his car-less, hippy-ass arrival, then we heaved out, away w/ a will in the red devil which i fear might not have too many more of these grand adventures left in her feeble frame an hour later we had escaped the fog gloom of pdx to find hood river bathed in bright sunlight - adams and hood glowing most gloriously - rick's heathen directions proved help enough, though he left out the grandest bit of poetry they had possible - just past the intersection of dethman, mainwaring and gilbertson roads, the scene of an annual pear-a-poolza i've heard tell, a gleaming white farmhouse framed by orchards - pretty as a picture i tell you, 'til i saw the plaidman muffins n' sausage all around, a bit of tree-clambering, haggling over ropes n' drivers, then we were off to assemble the others members of our Crack Team - the final passenger the raucous time travel'n steve, my erstwhile new fellow yosylum inmate in a few months i fear - he climbed into the back amidst the detritus of my modern life, n' me n' him and the phuzzy had a few healthy gut-laughs as we managed the treacherous roads north to trout lake last year, right after dispatching the deadhorse, steve n' justin n' i had gotten balls-deep stuck in snow just shy of the dynamite - this time around though the road was far fairer, and we hit the parking lot at the precisely pre-appointed hour - 11:11, dig it beyooootch! the only bit of useful beta you might glean from this tale: North 45.96154 degrees West 121.69929 degress adam grappled his way into his favorite dominatrix get-up as the devil disgorged its contents onto the frosty ground only a hundred or so yard walk through a pleasant forest... ... find an innocuous pile of collapsed cobbles, pierced by a person-wide passage into the pit of Pluto Getting Unborn [video:youtube] a last look up how to notate a path through eternal night? the grand cave is a true train tunnel, albeit one whose floor is classic stumble-fuck terrain - iridescent rubble underfoot, tangerine streaked walls of some terrestrial mineral which besplatters much of the debris of millenia lying all about, but all quite cheery in the warm glow of a half-dozen propane lanterns and the bobbing bright lances of many more headlamps we went a ways through easy ground until reaching an old gate, long since battered into submission, which led to a sharp turn to the left and more Big Dark - a little way further and then a sudden drop in the floor required a pause to rig up a short rap, easy enough to climb back up on the way back if you don't want to leave anything fixed [video:youtube] more fun meandering, god knows how far, but all through fair country and wicked easy by deadhorse standards, until a short downclimb down a frozen tongue of lava into a chamber w/ an elaborate anchor rick went on down, then the Plaid followed ours was a big party, so plenty of time to sit about w/ the music and the wine [video:youtube] eventually it was my turn and i enjoyed immeasurably the spelunk, w/ its views of hanging side-passages, a warren of lava-worms having wended their ways through the bowels of the earth long ago, leaving these ghostly sites 20 meters or so down the wall went away and a few free hanging feet later left me standing in yet another train tunnel, which we wandered through like winsome wraiths, light hearted and happy [video:youtube] as our clock wound down, we thought of the big party to come - tacos and tequila and honkey-tonk motherfuckers screeching till half-past drunknight - there was No Time to Fuck Around - so yet another yawning gap to be contended with - here a less impressive anchor stood above a shaft that went down god knows how far, but above it a little shelf led to a respectable climbing maneuver above the aforementioned gaper - there a little pedestal had yet another lacklusterish anchor and a rap of about 50 feet into a mammothly cool drowned cathedral - rick led across the shelf, pulled the move, then fixed and rapped - it took a long time for the rest of the train to manage the traverse, red-rover, red-rover style. once i landed, i turned to watch The Phuzzy make the leap [video:youtube] it was here our voyage had to turnaround - we wolfed down lunch and made acid-games w/ the lazer-pointer that turned the horror-show walls into a playhouse - it's a cool room, vast and vaulted, w/ a grand staircase of steep talus to climb back up on the far side, where legend tells of many more raps and traverses before arriving in a Great Sump and Hero's End i looked back at the crew assembled at the foot of our final rap [video:youtube] so then there was nothing to it but the way back up - both jug sessions were annoying at the start, with difficulties in the transition from the free hanging bit - the 2nd one's a good deal easier though, and adam was up it in style ultimately the earth spewed us back out again, one at a time and stretched out - severe distaste to find the sunny skies of earlier had yielded to a slush-storm - we rag-tagged it back to the sodden cars and made our escape through the dusky cloud-murk, wing-n'prayering it where the potholed parts hid in puddles i could tell stories from that evening if only i could recollect it well - i remember endlessly arriving birthday guests - beer n' margaritas - nachos n' tacos n' apple pie - music and more music - rain coming and going and a big breezy cold - a toddler who like all smart chilluns quickly learned to fear me - his papa near the end collapsed in the bathroom having just had his conversation w/ the Great White Telephone saturday adam and i arose early and not too terribly hungover and bent space through many a snowy mile to arrive at smith, where we slummed our way up the monkey in the wintery cold so a year was too long a wait to tangle w/ this tale i've unfolded - what subterranean summit should i set for meself next i wonder? Gear Notes: i imagine if you really wanted to explore this puppy you want a 4-5 ropes - of the 3 raps we did, the first needs only 15 feet or so of cord and could just be pulled, then 2nd was something like 25 meters and needs to be fixed, and the 3rd something like 30 meters, preferably dynamic to protect the leader's traverse, but still needing to be fixed

arrived at the dynamite cave p-lot at 11:11 on 11/11/11 - all told, we had a baker's 11 in the hole that day excellent weather for mucking about underground this weekend!

nice - dang budget cuts nixed the fall semester of my history of war class so i'm not following my anniversaries so much these days again, wtf? doesn't it seem like awful bad luck to name yer ship the uss mt hood?

josh needs so little tempting to do the nasty