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Trip: Yosylum - Da Kapitan - Poon-Tangerine Trip Date: 7/4/2011 Trip Report: strange, how the great gut-glow of a near-death experience fades so fast - there we were, a few hours after returning to sweet terra firma, our crap drying in the sizzling sun, and i could feel it slipping away - the crowds, noise, cars and whole general wal-mart feel to the valley, all those thigns that truly do not matter when your balls are a few inches from the band-saw, all those things were slowly creeping back into the fore of my mind - i felt i was losing something special, and had to have it back - "every minute charlie squats on the wall he gets stronger" no sense in going back to the salathe really - we wanted to see some part of the capitan we hadn't already - i for one had never walked further than the nose on the east side - ben's wishlist was down to just a few candidates - we didn't have time for mescalito, but the tangerine trip seemed the perfect salve to soothe our weathered souls, wickedly overhanging should any of the t-storms predicted practically everyday appear. our lessons learned, we brought in our synthetic bags and had nice phat rain-flys for our ledges as well the route - a mere 17 pitches compared to twice that for salathe we took 1 day off to dry out, and then it was friday and we were to the business, drinking iced-wine, chain-smoking, parsing the topo, sorting iron and water and gear in that sweet clearing just below the wall, across the river which worked well to keep the beer cold - every 20 minutes a jumbo touron-bus would pull into the shade and shit out its contents - we had good drunken fun Playing the Part for the tourists, and were sure to assure all the young girls "you can touch anythiiiing you want" we were up before dawn on our fixing day, a rare thing for me less i have to retch - a cool, breezy drive to our date w/ destiny - everything calm - memories of the cougar cub i'd seen the night of our bailure - was it, like the dead swallow, a sign from dog? were our hopes young and reborn, strong and bound to kill? spectacular walk along the wall to the base of the trip - our bags heavy w/ hammers and nails - i vowed to promote el capitan to el generalissimo should we win through (seriously, what gives? the hugest fucking stone on planet earth a mere O-3?!?) - saw a crew bivied a pitch or 2 up mescalito and Felt the Stoke to have fellow travelers crawling up the wall same time as us as we might watch their progress - sadly, they came down that morning for reasons unknown and beyond all expectation, we had the whole of the east side of the Leviathan to ourselves for the next week! the base of the beast a strange place, scree and talus suddenly giving way to a heavenly forest, 'till you stop and the mozzies, made in their millions by the accumulating seeps off the wall, appear for their feast! [video:youtube] pitch 1 and 2 were bens, i got 3 n' 4 - pitch 1 was a wierd one - go straight up to the bolt if you're a badass, otherwise its a big old wandering highball traverse in - alone in the drip, i felt at home, washed w/ memories of beacon's north side - its a great deal like the cave by siege tactics - stupifyingly big roofs, great sheets of brittle rock sagging everywhere - compact and brittle to the first short bolt/rivet ladder - did i mention, true to form, "false-start" ben had to lower down from here to take his first shit of the day? soon enough it was my turn to take off [video:youtube] our constant companions for the week made their first appearance - for days the peregrines pirouted and pierced the sky w/ their incessant shrieks - occasionally you'd catch them playing w/ their food, dropping their prey from their talons at the top of great climbs, then turning down and snatching them back mid-air - as we neared the summit, frequently they'd fly by, silent as ghosts, to give us the great Stink Eye from just a few feet away [video:youtube] ben off on p2 - el cap tree behind him tangerine drip! [video:youtube] p3 a rare one one for the route - free-climbing! holy shit, how do you do this again? the topo seemed crap for us for these lower pitches - it said 3 and 4 would combine but holy shit that didn't look to be the case - we pulled up at a midpt anchor so i could lead out again p4 ended up being maybe the wierdest aid-ptich i've done? a steeep bit of relatively easy aid leading to the mother of all mank-ladders - mystery bits of metal broken and hammered deep w/ bits of shoelaces to tie your soul up in - lots of big reaches to wing and a prayer bullshit, and then the big ball-buster - you emerge to a few bolts that take you to the bottom of the mammoth roof that cuts across the bottom of the wall, 4 pitches up, for hundreds of feet - here the wall has a general down angle of 25 degrees or so, so you must down aid towards an anchor taht's practically at the same height as where you started! almost all the rope is out by the time you hit the anchor, so how the hell does 3 link in? for me, the whole thign was made more desperate by the roaring waterfall emerging from the base of the roof, soaking everything through that touches the wall - half the fixed gear is covered in so much algea that you can't begin to understand what exactly it is the bit of faded tat is attached to a tried to pendulum on several occasions but foudn the steepness and slickness very limiting eventually we were there though and ben's epic began - not interested in hanging in space to wait for it to unfold, i threw down our 2 static lines and only then realized just how overhanging we'd gotten - though the topo assured us we could fix 2 ropes to the wall for launch, just 3 feet down from the hanging anchor i couldn't begin to touch the wall - not certain how you'd make this work? maybe take a stickclip to pull yourself back into the wall periodically? i ended up on the ground as the shadows gathered - i'd handed my day-pack over to ben before my lead adn so had no headlamp, so sat on talus and watched the night overcome him - he seemed to be having problems doing the many lowerouts required on the down-aiding part - a few days later we figured out his deficiencies and got them rectified, but this day he wans't down till late, late, late, and so we settled, oddly, on a rest day before launchign so, after a day of getting fat, packign up food and water, and laying in plans, we set out on the 4th of july - we wouldn't reach the summit for 5 days step 1 was jugging 100 meters of wildly overhanging rope in the middle of a slow-motion waterfall - to save 30 feet of jugging, i climbed up the wall and took a wonderful swing into the tree tops - wish i could remember to stop taking sideways videos [video:youtube] and we're off! don't know why they call this launching - space shuttles launch - our takeoff is more akin to fat albert trying to get off the shitter i got the joy of hauling our 2 bags, 90 lbs of water and 2 portaledges up to the top of 4, passing the knot along the way, and all the while hanging like hell - a good introduction to the upper route soon enough ben was up and setting out on p5, a c3+f thrillshow that follows a lazer-thin knife-blade crack just above and along the top of the big roof below us [video:youtube] after this pitch we finally escaped the drips it's a loooong way to the end of p5, and great fun for the follower uncage the pigs! no need to lower out, nothing but empty sky to rage through [video:youtube] our theme for the trip was torpidness - day 1 ended w/ us atop p5, nowhere near the 4 pitches we vainly thought we'd manage that day - no matter though, we were off, and w/ a wall so steep, a distinct feeling of commitment was upon me - i don't know how the hell you could rap out of this granite prison i lead p6 on the morning of our second day - a very ho-hum one as a recall, mostly on rivets and fixed gear - ben cleaned purty flowers on the wall - a whole ecosystem unglimpsed by flatlanders - spiders and bugs, bats and birds, flowers and grass your friend and humble narrator p7's a cool one, and a rare one for the trip too w/ no rivets or fixed gear p7 ended in 1 of the 2 promised "ledges" on the route - 12 inches wide, a half-dozen feet long, and a big old wall bending you over should you even try to stand on it - i was horrified - the topo makes it look like you have to tiptoe to the end of it to attain a rivet ladder for p8 - after a few deep breaths i engaged the beacon-rock deforestation machine, stripped out the grass, and found a pin and a funky alien placement that let me move along the ledge at nose-height sadly, all the action's out of the view of the belayer - a ladder takes you to a 5.7 friction traverse onto a rare bit of less than vertical rock which decides to betray you by becoming hard aid - 10a runout, c3+ camhooks, or a2 sawed angles, all w/ a screaming, bouncing fall reversing hte pendulum should you peel - bet you can bet what i did just into the crux, a roar of thunder alarmed me, but looking up i saw only blue sky - looking across to middle cathedral though i caught hundreds of boulders bouncing down from teh summit, slamming into the apron above the forest - for 40 minutes a thick grey stone fog hung on the road below, and yet despite the daily wailing of ambulances and cop-sirens, the valley seemed no more perturbed than a cup of warm pudding p8 anchors were shitty for portaledges, so i went back down the haul line to spend our second night atop p7 ben in the morning - he was rocking a broken double-ledge dating to the clinton administration - i had a single fish braille-book, my favorite crag route, poked its head up at this height ben cleanign p8 on the morning of the 3rd day - this pitch is a motherfucker for rope drag, and the last bit to the anchor is stiff too w/ a loose block above a rivet goddamn we continued to be slow - despite waking w/ the morning light on the cathedrals at 7, we never left camp before 830, and on this 3rd day it was past 11 before ben was done cleaning the p8 from the day before and reracked to leave on 9 p9 is a bizarre one - a beautiful sidewalk, but the First Ones choose instead to cling to the choss just above it, so that virtually at any point you can biff and slam into the stone below? even better is the a3 line of heads that serves as a variation, also just a dozen feet above disaster at the end of 9, on the last so called ledge of the route it was early evening before it was my turn to do p10 -thunder storms to the east, no doubt sending showers off tourists down half-domes chains i really liked p10, all but the shitty squeeze that suddenly shows up after the first 3rd - slithering through it w/ my pack on my stereo got scraped adn Took the Ride, the 2nd speaker/player combo i'd lost in as many weeks :angry: again, the anchors i reached were less favorable for camping, so on day 3 we called it good after only 3 fucking pitches, returning to the ledge on 9 to sleep - this time ben cleaned the pitch above in the cool of the evening though, so we got a quicker start the next day the mornign of the 4th day - the day for the last breakfast and last dinner i'd brought and we're barely half the fucking way up the face?!? ben returning to the top of p10 in the morning indian paintbrush, el cap tower, the texas flake and the boot flake p11 a portion of c2 than rivets and hooking - never done so much hookng on a route as the Trip p12 had me peeing in me panties for a bit - thiiiin crack off the anchor - smallest aid-nuts you got and occasionally you can finangle a 00 metollius in - dead heads and a shattered knifeblade at the crux, and i was happy to have a nice long cheater-stick to avoid that - goddamn i want to sleep on solid ground sometime soon! my typical hauling setup - yeah i know i shouldn't haul off a single bolt but i found myself doing it occasionally to get the pigs as close to the powerpoint as i could - i like the 2nd pulley to haul myself back up for the gri-gri plunge time for ben's 2nd slice of the day, the aptly #'ed pitch 13, which summoned the epic again- awkwardness, choosiness, tiredness, whatever - time passed and the Great Orb grew low in the west, throwing slanted light through the sleepy valley he is going to be done eventually, right? maybe i'd be less annoyed if my 4x4 fat-ass hadn't moments before snapped the plywood of the belay chair in half? our 4th night on the wall had me in a rare auold foul mood - seriously, if i had a dollar for every fine fuck-word i uttered this trip, i'd have enough to feed n' geld the whole nation of somalia - this camp pissed me off as the wall wasn't quite flat, and my ledge just wouldn't tension right to avoid a sickening degree of lean - the fact that dinner was shitty dry tunafish w/ no hopes for anything better tomorrow, and still 4 pitches to go, when we'd yet to manage that many in a single day yet, were no doubt on my mind regardless, like all those nights, i slept like an angel - well, like an angel that dreams of doing deliciously unclean things to clean looking people i reckon - this morning it was a change of a pace and ben got to go up the fixed rope first to haul and prepare the way for my advance - i cleaned while he hauled [video:youtube] ben in space! p14 was fun, and i had a burr up my ass for sure to get it done quick - very awkward a2 - i left a fixed cam clipped but cleaned everything else in anticipation of the mother of all rivet ladders above the lip the p14 anchors a joy - the ptich goes 165 feet till they ran out of rope, than just leaves you dangling in space, with a great joy in your heart as you realize you're just a few feet away from where the roof rolls back and shows you the top - looked to be ajoy to clean as well! the slow steady creak of the haul - like fucking a polar bear - get your 6 inches, don't think, get your 6 inches, don't think... [video:youtube] ben off on the last of the steepness - p15 - summit or death! don't mind me, i'll just dangle here FAHQ the leaning tower last of the rivet ladders the glooming of the evening was approaching, but at the top of 15 i felt like we just might get it done - 5.7 R C2 hooking - sounds great! ben poses for yet another attempt to get into the trailblazer fan hall o' fame p16 was my personal jesus pitch - very heady and refreshing after all that steep aid - rivet, head, hook, traversing hooks, pancake flakes flexing under fingertips, hook, hook, holyshit, a true fucking ledge, tree and all! i was mega-stoked, in the fading light, to be just below the top but at a place we could still stop and spend the night w/ harness off! it was a fine evenign, though swedish fish and the last of the camels were the extent of my fare - ben hungered to sleep on his 'ledge one last night, so i bunked down w/ the ringtail who was no doubt disgusted w/ our complete lack of shit to steal I FEEL HAPPY (even if this is the 5th day of a 3-4 day route ) my own little piece of paradise as ben scrambled up to the top the views from the top are sorta okay... el cap's top itself of course is kinda ho-hum - man, you can just see the glacial slabs punished the land up here - and no fat bivies to see! i was very happy to have stayed wehre we did that last night fucking blazers a most providentially placed tree, well bent for hauling - i was anticipating a mideast crisis like hauling hell, but we did it easily down the east ledge descent in wicked heat - way too much weight! something worth returning to the valley for! sentinel, sentinel dome, sentinel falls. for the unencumbered an easy 3rd-4th class downscramble - not so for us i *heart* halfdome? the last of 3 double-rope raps to the shattered steepness of the final trail - my toe-tops rubbed raw - ancient long-dong angle foudn in the wash, so long submerged the gravel rusted into the metal - skitters - sweat - savage hunger - fuuuuck, i want this done already! the final kick in the balls, we reach the picnic area but there's no ride, food nor water, the pit-toilets reek, and from the smells and flies around the beer boxes, i'm fairly certain someone's tried to hide a chopped-up hooker in them eventually base-camp ma was around though, and w/ a campground for the night - we went to the curry buffet and i ranged deep into my towering 'roid rage, snarling at my fellow suppers in the queue, eating 4 courses before even emerging from line with 3 plates of chicken, beef, lasagna, stir-fry, tatters, gravy, corn, soup, salad, corndogs, etc 20 minutes later i suddenly grew aware i was moments from hurling up the entire contents of my overstretched stomach and fought my way to my feet to wander, barefooted, out into the darkness to Gather My Strength we spent our last night in the valley w/ the most unfriendly and unhairy german lesbians i've yet met - played the endless game of "this is my fuckign carabiner and this one is yours" - woke to tourons howling at black bears like republicans howl at black people ben wasn't ready for his tangerine trip to end just yet breakfasted on nutella and rolling rock, then it was off for one last bit of activity - we clambered back up to the base of the trip, recovered our 3rd rope from launch day, looked around for the shitcan i'd accidentally precipated the 2nd day as well as for my stereo, then headed down, doing some quality rock-hounding along the way honestly, at this point my narrative breaks down - i remember devoting meself to a true and honest drunkenness - a dip in the merced - hanging out w/ el cap bridge hardmen - dogs - then that big boat home, the 3 liters of burgundy holding its own quiet well having completed our cycle and after the what have you, we were owed this! its rare indeed for a man to feel a Great Golden Glow like this one - soemthing that a 2X2, animal-style, compliments quite well we had lived like kings, and now it was time to return to slaving like beggars for our barest essentials

Missed this one first time through (yes, it was that entertaining). Dudes! One word: Walmart - $28 - Micro Tek Ultra-Compact Mummy 30-Degree Sleeping Bag Werner says they are a stickler on this one if they have to come after you... as it turned out i had a cheap-o synthetic bag as my camping bag in the car, so, lesson learned, it went on tangerine trip - amusingly, i learned its value when wet the very night we bailed, as that bag had been in the soft bag on top of the car and gotten soaked, yet still i slept like a child in it back in the pines

nice - small world! yeah, we were damn envious of ya'lls setup when the clouds cleared enough to see you - we had problems on the bailure when the rope got stuck above the hollow flake ledge and we had to dig into the bag to get gear to aid back up to it, then ben spent a good long while figuring out how to get him and the bag back to me after i reversed the hollow flake - ben thought maybe we could rap strait down, tyler, but we didn't know for sure and those fixed lines from heart back to ground were a big old piece of sanity to us, so i at least was determined to get back to that known bit of good instead of launching on 11 pitches worth of unknown raps hmm...shit...guess it's time to start working on the tangerine trip bit, which had a much happier ending... but bits i left out? swallows! holy fuck they were cool on this wall - one day we saw hordes of them fornicating - they'd end up in balls of 3-4, all linked together, heading ballistically down the wall in tight rotating gyres, w/ many more darting in and out to beat at the pack knew we were fucked in that storm when the birds and bats shut up - the rest of the time they were as part of the landscape as the roar of the merced - by storms ends, it appeared half of el cap meadow had succumbed to swamp! dark omen - a dead swallow in a crack on first jug look forward to finishing the damn thign someday - the salathe headwall looked fucking mindbendingly cool up there

Trip: Yosylum - Da Kapitan - Seeing Dog on the Salathe Date: 6/26/2011 Trip Report: summer 2011 set in quick - family out the door for the olde dominion - lightening trip to index for a weekend w/ rock ninja powderhund - some puttering about beacon and the like, then it was school put to bed for the vernal vacation, ten tons of shit in the car including enough toxins to kill a bull blue whale, and then over the bridge to big ben's house for the rendezvous, packing the ford full of shining war gear our secret weapon for the 2 week trip - ben's ma becky - our base camp scrounger - a sharp nose she has for wait lists and spare firewood, salads and free ice - and holy shit, does she like to drive! best yosylum trip for me ever thataways as i drove a total of 3 hrs the whole round trip had to settle for sucking snus the whole way instead of a christian smoke, but lip cancer is the small price to pay, no? binge and purge on the plunge south - endless dylan albums - naps - game of thrones - plans w/n plans - we washed up at hardin flats in the nether hours - shoulda gone strait into camp 4 to settle into line in the darkness but figured a few hrs nap and showing up at 6 would be good enough - not hardly pissed to have no place in the inn in the end and fucking scads of buses and touron bullshit all about, every road clogged and clusterfucked, ben and i resolved to get the hell off the valley floor lickety-split - we found fixed ropes already up to heart ledges, and figured we'd skip the freeblast and just begin up the salathe the next day - we cragged on sacher crack to get a Taste for Wide in anticipation of the days coming, then retired to hardin flats again and packed up amidst the clouds of 'skitters our Murderer's Row - thanks to timetravelingsteve-o for the lender of the Fucking Giant - ben was hot for anythign like a wide lead, so i was happily settling for doing the shit more straitforwardely aided up in the darkness on the sabbath day, we commuted on again, munching bacon - hoofed our single bag n' miscellaneous shite up in a single brutal hike, and i started up the rope, haul-rope in tow, while ben went back w/ our poles and to fetch a few odds n' ends the look down from the 2nd rope - mostly intact phat ledge just below heart - an easy jug but a hateful haul we arrived at upper heart ledge early enough in the afternoon, but the sun was blazing and so we settled in for a bit for shade and shooting the shit, eating some lunch and taking in the big, big bitch looming above us my first soiree this side of the wall - overawed like a damned goggle-eyed snapping turtle, i oggled the scenes of legend - the heart - the shield - el cap spire - yadda yadda fuckign yadda the heat beat, ben set off - p12 was puzzling at first, lunching on the ledge, but he sorted it out well enough, earning along the way the nickname i've kept since: "false start ben" - holy jeebus, my boy will get the rope up there, but it's fits n' starts, 2 step up, 1 step back kinda progress - gives you something to do other than suck down smoke at the belays i reckon quick clean and haul, and we were up on lung ledge, our first night on the wall - the salathe, like the nose, is partly so badass for the # of excellent ledges n' stances along the route, such that no portaledge is necessary - if you're like the colorado badass that blew through us on day 3, you also don't need a shirt, 2nd rope, more than a couple cams, or more than 12 hours of free time in yer schedule ben doing what he does best - playing w/ poo - goddamn he put me to shame in the shit count, ending our wall solidly in the lead, 5 to 1 i recall day 2 we were troublingly slow - hauling up the 4th class pitch was aggravating - here ben heads down to help my haul up - gotta build your here in an awkward spot along a ramp - odd that the hallowed first ones didn't just keep wandering on up, but i've learned to Trust the Founders the children's moon the hollow flake has the horror reputation of course, but ben handled it well i though, only once he committed to swinging into it - sucks for the belayer though, since you can't see the action around the corner - wouldn't be surprised at all if we choose the retard way to belay and haul ben up on hollow flake ledge the good life [video:youtube] hollow flake ledge gets a tepid rep on the topo, but we found it switched on and smashing, very comfy, well stocked w/ water - but holy shit, the 5.7 chimney above, for which placing no pro at all is recommended, looms large above it by the time ben had overcome The Fear and got up the chimney, it was obvious we werent' going to make it to el cap spire w/o doing a bunch of night climbing, so eventually we settle don leaving some water and our bed things on the hollow flake ledge, hauling the rest up the pitch, then fixing the pitch above that so we could get an early start on the ear on day 3 great place to sleep, hollow ledge - not much legroom for 2, but boulders pinch you in so you can strip off the harness and snooze to visions of great dancing titties i'd done the last lead above the chimney day 2, and i got the first of day 3 too, taking us up just under the ear - before i arrived the salathe-in-a-day crew blew through, w/ a bit of bad news - the last forecast we'd seen had gone south, w/ rain forecast taht night, though it was supposed to get better the next day they said - we figured we had bivy bags and fortitude, and there was no sense bailing on a rumor of weather, so soldiered on ahead ben setting off on the ear pitch, far more eager to grapple w/ it than i was! and grapple w/ it mightily he did, working like a spider to render it safe - i had time to look down and savor the view - the nose at the base - the fixed ropes - the big EC! eventually big B emerged on the far side of the ear the bizness complete, the pig was sent into space i got the next pitch, an aid-wonder - a full meal deal yosemite long pitch of continuous phat-crack - looking back at the belay crack starts large and awkward, eventually goes thin - it's the first steep one, and just goes and goes, ending up just a bit below the alcove and el cap spire w/ the weather clearly turning, lightening clear to the west, we contemplated if there might be better shelter down in the alcove, but crazy winds blowing back behidn the wall made me question the wisdom of it, so up we went to Take the Thing By the Balls - ben gets the wide stuff! once on the top of the legendary spire, we decided to ignore the looming nightmare comign upon us, and use the dying light to fix as much of the next pitch as possible [video:youtube] the flickers of fire in the darkness and the waxing weather-signs made me feel all antsy in me pantsy sadly, the last part of the tale goes rather unrecorded - by 10 the visiblity was being swallowed in wisps of cloud roaring up the face - we buckled down for a storm, snug in our bivy sacks - we hoped it would be what we'd experienced before - a quick burst of violence, then clearing and good times instead, at 1 a.m. we woke to a lashing that went undiminished for the next 12 hrs - the pillar top became a strange sea - the pounding of the rain confusing - were we actually in a waterfall? sure felt like it! suffocating in the bag, i'd open a port to gasp a few breathes, only for the ocean to pour through i drifted through the night, alternately delighted and terrified - dark visions - reality of wakefulness scarcely distinguishable from the hyperworld of dreams - by 4, the storm unbroken, i noticed my bivy sack was becoming badly defeated - no leaks really, just moisture crossing hte membrane and collecting on the sleeping bag good time to admit to stupidity - mountaineer dipshit that i am, i was rocking the down sleeping bag, as was ben - years of toting that thign around through foul weather had never gotten me screwed, but it was time for that to change - by murky sunrise, w/ shrieking wind and zero-viz, the bag had become a full on freezing sponge - my hands puckered like after hours spent in the pool - holy jeebus, is this thing goign to fucking end or what? a lot of laying aroudn in misery ensued, occasional moments of clearing almost instantly fading back away amid renewed sky-violence - discovered my smokes were soaked and dead - my shoes and kneepads in the hydro-sack overcome and sponged as well - what to do? if it keeps up like this for days, how would we NOT die? ben broke out his phone, just to see if he could summon The Man, even if he wanted to, and discovered that critical bit of gear was a failure too - wow, so this is really happening, ha! but doesn't it still beat being at work? with nothign to do but endure, ben tried to begin a rather religious argument - no atheists in a foxhole, i delayed the topic for drier days of course all storms must end - when ours had, every pitch above us was a roaring cascade - even if we were dry and in good order, we'd need a day at least to let the waterfalls slacken - that wasn't hardly the case for us though - we had to bail, but goddamn we were a long way up in the sky! and worse still, we'd fixed the half pitch above us last night, now a vertical river - ben snaked back up it, and we had to leave a .75 to lower him back off so we could begin the Great Chicken-Out ended up not being as bad as we'd feared - my thoughts of mortality had grown grim indeed the past few hours - the sun occasionally broke out, and parts of us dried - we grew encouraged - that broke a bit though when we got a rope stuck above the hollow flake ledge, despite a conscious attempt to prevent just that - fixed soon enough, now all was left to reverse the hollow flake - luckily that turned out not too hard, though i found myself at the end of the pendulum having to jug on a rope that had long since lost its kern, leaving only the dozen strands of the core - more difficult was reversing the haulbag but then, soon enough, as evening drew near, it was clear and holding, and we were safe at the top of the fixed lines - we were down on the ground shortly after dark, only mildy annoyed our ride was nowhere to be found, and we with no way to contact her, nor ability to sleep in sodden gear at the base - we were almost resolved to build a bonfire and endure once again, when someone stopped by the road and let us use their phone the next day was drying out and swaggering about, feeling the Great Glow - 24 hrs later we were heroes again, and set on avenging ourselves on the Poontangerine Pimp!

the "upload photo" button, at least in chrome, is always covered over by the goddamn add and its damned impossible to click behind it!

that area is tits! sometimes the border crossing issues fuck me though

indeed - gonna craft a tr 'fore too long - sorta overwhelmed by the # of pix to wade through though and settlign for just drinking and napping currently so now that you've realized this ambition of yours that's brewed for so long, what's next?

so we're back to the good old days of parking 100 yards away? musta lost 15 lbs on the salathe and the trip so devoting most of today to eating and drinking as much as possible - reckon a rather rambly tr oughta emerge from the toxin-fog, no doubt framed w/ many fine swear words, if only to keep that trail-running fuck in 2nd place from eclipsing my lead

when are we gonna have to start paying to park again? has it happened already?

skiis will suck plenty on the depot approach as well so don't forget the no matter which way ya go

and hell, while you're at it, frank and paul have a nice bill too! http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/06/marijuana-bill-officially-introduced-to-congress-by-ron-paul-barney-frank.html

don't forget to bring beer n' smokes though to hang out w/ the, at best, one other party that'll be in the n-hood discovered this weekend its super easy (5.7?) to reach the swiss ledges, lower pic, in just 2 rope lenghts if you start w/ the "alpine route" on the far right side of the parking lot wall beside the graffit'ed cave - the swiss ledge is a hoot of a place to spend the night and/or holler at your friends across the way in the upper picnic area super duper fun to be had over there while waiting for the falcons to quit fucking alice n' wonderland ledge, just above the rabbit hole! 1 pitch below the summit go monkey!

this time of year the n side is good n' dry though and there are a number of options to fill up a day - olson's new guide's got all the beta you need

mere politeness, really, on ole'john's part - you see a man acting the asshole, you can be generous and just say he's poorly/mis-informed, or you can be truthful and mean i suppose and chalk it up to what it is - some people are just fucking assholes, and the more they learn and develop, the more their assholes grow in size

why do you hate Jews? more like "why do you hate the space bar?" LOVE SPACE BARS WITH JEWS IN IT.LOVE EM ALL. [video:youtube] well played, sir - think the jawas are bit more of standins for arabs though

why do you hate Jews? more like "why do you hate the space bar?"

whatever asshole invented "ad hominem," i sure hope he's getting a nickel each time its gets used on teh intrewebs - fucker could afford to clone ceaser n' bring 'em back from the dead w/ the proceeds

uncommonly creative for a tarheel

rich people - duh, like everything else since the beginning of fucking time - wtf does it matter what their names are exactly or how many of them there are?

monty python's the meaning of life: "at least i don't work for jews"

why is good?where is yes?how is blue? why the fuck don't more people worry about this!?!

clearly, the only solution to this tragedy is a flat-tax and the repeal of obamany-care!!!

some of my best friends are smiths