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Trip: Smurfistani Free State - Steins Pillow n' Voyage of the Cow-Dawg Date: 5/28/2011 Trip Report: merry fucking memorial day - fucktacular weather in all directions for damn near 500 miles - took my 2 vacation days, way in advance, on the basis of such fine mem day adventures as this n' this - ended up fucked ten ways to sunday - wanted to go to squampton - nope. the valley - sure, the weather's good, but no one interested. n cascades - sure, but are ya fawk'n kidding me? that left smiff at best - das powderhund had thrown his hat into the ring, slumming no doubt n' working on some positive karma - he was keen to check out another route on steins, the both of us just dickign around on the dog route, and that sounded good enough i went up to smiff friday after an intense day of ya'dwork, back-broke, stumbling n' half-hawking up barfballs every step - meant to climb ho chi minh's trail on the red wall, but solo n' sans guide, i fucked it up and climbed some sorta variation of helter skelter before setting out of the papa ho right, only to reach the first anchor and not feel so set on it, given the wierd anchors and the prospect of a fine party in the bivy that evenign while waiting for bryan to arrive fine evenign in the bivy lot - whiskey n' irishmen - dogs n' dirtbags - steel guitars - rastafarians - a growing realization that bryan better damn well show up sober or no way in hell we're reaching the tits camping of steins that there evening saturday morning dawned mostly bright, and so oft to stein's we set the aforementioned oregon towers - takes the turkey monster to the cleaners, it does! the dog route itself and its many ledges our route from the trail vista - head n' shoulders better than the orginal by damn site - sweeeeet 5.10 hands/finger crack to start on solid stone (dead center, at bottom), then adventureneering for certain on run out hero bolts after a good huff of a headful of sunshine and the resultingly instant walk in, we weathered the crowds of morel-seekers and in shite-snowstorms set off - schizophrenic weather, one mometn sweet n' sunny, the next wind n' cloud n' hail n' grouple n' certain shit - i mangle-fucked the starting crack, reckoning my skills might best be used on that which could be aided no matter what, saving the rope-gun for later - aiding much of the crack to his horror, the 'hund got a chance to show me how to do it deadright not long after he then got to lead a very short p2, but one now stripped of some bolts, such that it takes a brave soul indeed to reach the next set of anchors i doubt anything after that 3rd bolt woulda held the 'hund, had he fallen - he showed all the insticts of those blue-blooded badasses i infrequently gallavant with - hestitant at first, sensing the fear-frenzy boiling in them, but then committing, silently, effortlessly, fucking-assholes! p2 was so short, and my hate-crime of aiding a freeable crack so soon in the air, i offered up the longer p3 to the top - for his sins, bryan took it, and soon paid the price making a bad call on not extending an early cam, the drag grew, and then to boot the mother-fucker of all snow squalls built up - the gap between the n side and hill-side howled, sleet sliding straight sideways - the trees shrieked n' tourists, short-clad, skattered from their safe holes from which they had watched us - half way out the rope, the 'hund found the relatively easier stone snot-slick, w/ all the weight of a dead-elephant dragging him back down - helpless, i was more than happy to accept the inevitable defeat, and he lowered off and we rapped the storm in its quiet dawning, before he set off [video:youtube] back down on the ground, we found shelter from the shit in the many caves and overhangs stein's has to offer a fire was by damn-sight in order, and made a nice caveman-tv as we pounded the liter of bandit brave-bryan had wisely transported to the crag after an hour or so the storm broke, and sheets of shredded cloud skated across the valley, revealing the twin pillars in the fog-shrouded distance i took in the truffula tree n' lamented the shit-sense of the lumbering lorax our plan was brilliant, and we weathered in ease n' harmony the hail and fog and windy blast, and with heads heavy w/ happiness, we eventually made our way back up the trail in fine conditions, pausing to take in the stein-wand twin pillows! soggy trails n' squishy mud n' some sorta non-indian paintbrush bloom emerging from the foot-filth it was a fine night - one no words can do justice - winged it back into metropolitan prineville for road-cokes n' camel-killers, then back up the wending way to camp in a fog - roaring bonfires - morrison and the american prayer - "lament for my cock, sore n' crucified, i seek to know you" - chain-smoking - "wild-eyed women, flowery in their summit, we welcome you to our procession!" - eventual wood-smoke soaked unconsciousness - "confusion - no connection - would you die for me? eat me - this way - the end" sunday morning blew goats - i'd spaced on the fuel cannister, so another cold breakfast - even worse cloud n' gloom then yday, so we decided to hoof it for smiff and the crowds n' glory it portended great drive back - the firing range was up and at action! arriving at the smiff-bivy well afternoon i found much the same motley cast of characters as a few days earlier - old larry himself prince of the scene - rumors of me booting all about the boys room much exagerated - we decided to take on an adventure route of bryan's suggestion - voyage of the cow-dog - fuck yeah! totally brilliant on the ultimate-gangbang of a smiff memorial day weekend - 2 easy sport pitches along the crest of the picnic lunch wall, breathtaking vistas of shiprock (why won't anyone climb it w/ me?!?) and the pl wall itself the route itself - a fair walk up the shiprock gully to the end - moribund mus musculus marking the start bryan on p1 - 5.8 he said (not having a guide being the theme of the long weekend) larry and i followed on one rope, then i got the true pearly - p2 - fawwwwwwwwwk yeah - hero-stone, bolts, n' fucking badass exposure just above the picnic lunch wall itself, spitting you out after a cleverly circumvented overhang onto a cool platform below a hornbill pillar, a sickening walk-off from there, or a much-fucked rap bryan slum'n his way upward, shiprock in her glory behind him as my lead unfolded, the irascible corvallisclimber, student intow (and by that, i mean on lead) arrived for the party - caleb, fresh off a week in the sisters, and still a day away from the sickening thud of a down-ward spiral, ex-girlfriend induced, got his first (?) proud stint on the sharp-end the getting off was half-fucked - easest perhaps to do just a single rap, then scramble down a seriously exposed in parts gully - windy and spaced-out, some of us some scrambled, some rapped, fucking that whole thing up - if you want to rap the whole thing, do 3 single-raps (the 2nd being quite short) in order to avoid the impossible pull that pushed bryan to solo back up the route to unfuck the rest of that evening went leisurely enough - foiled at a drunken round of 5 gallon buckets, we settled on the more fashionably 9-bucket version and the fuck-hard thing above it - bryan flashing it in pure-style, then larry hemmed n' hawwed and got harranged something fierce for it from a half-caustic 'hund 'fore i failed half-way up and he had to sort it all out anyhow settled for another evening of getting shitty - some time at the depot - a meal of french fries n' beers for a boy on a budget! tyler's ma even made an appearance! memorial day itself something special, an early rise - packed up and paced off - we'd debated the widowmaker and shiprock, but settled on the marsupial traverse in the end it was a bit of a cock-up - setting out on an initially exciting 10b, the whoel thing became ho-hum and melodramatic, and encountering crowds at brogans, from whence i'd done the rest, we opted to quaff our meager beer-stash and rap down, at least experiencing a rap incident decent enough to get my heart pumping soon thereafter we had some chuckles w/ the brethern again in a cave down by the river - bryan had to be off for his ride, and i for my family, but took the chance to play awhile on the boulders by the river - holy shit there's some qualitity there! double handcracks - hoots n' hollers - chimney-fucks! then the long orbit home

here's to a mama cass ending for any and all of you fawks!

i'm standing by the wiener!

so badass - i'm gonna lose 100 lbs (them thare cracks like tiiiiiiny!) and give it a shot some day

a 17 year old freshman in high school the article said? was his nickname "slappy?"

probably - how many folks you know who've sold an organ?

what an asshole?

you'll likely be just fine - crowds aren't so bad even when there as they don't really require you to sit aroudn and wait - can always pick an untramelled line when you arrive such as the west crater rim, luetholds, pearly gates, etc...

wish i could come - if only the road coulda opened a week later...

...he didnt' actually get himself killed might not want to threaten a gaint black dude with a toy gun?

i remember doing that part in the pitch black, sadly not in so graceful a style

fuck wars, tell me the congress's chaplain is empowered to issue fatwas!?

you could ask a mexican druglord to fill it full of coke n' grass and see if he'll ship it all on his dime in your name?

wait, you took (and used) a portaledge? where/why? was the route super crowded or something?

just came in the door from building a yuppie garden all day to discover the good little woman had wrought some home-made pizza w/ black olives n' cheese - time to drown it in a gut-worth of table wine then pass the hell out, then wander out to smiff for a solo scaling of the monkey

from the wayback machine on page 2 - 68$/week for a family of 12 - you think none of these items or the american equivalent are beyond being obtained by the vast majority of americans, poor or not?

the only thing this feller suffered from was getting shot 4 times in the chest

if you were a magic 8-ball, this definitely would one of your more constant readings come on, you claimed that organic latte or whatever silly stuff was what I wanted for the poor maybe its your own reading skills in question? said item is a silly stand-in for good, high-quality food, exactly what you want, and in the case of latte, particularly prized by folks who fancy they've figured the whole fucking world out

if you were a magic 8-ball, this definitely would one of your more constant readings happiness is a dog that chases its own tail - many fat folks would be happy to be thin for sure, but then exercise makes them sad, as does tofu, no beer, no ice-cream, walking more than 50 feet, yadda, yadda, yadda speaking of strawmen - you seem to think i'm a heartless bastard for the poor'boys? i worked near a decade back east in inner-city schools, and i didn't do it for fucking chuckles. no shit, places like that need a lot of help, but it's not like the nation hasn't been putting its shoulder into that effort, w/ strikes n' gutterballs along the way i'll warrant, for half a century? the problems of such places are like a big old ball of tangled string, and to be sure the best solution for the gordian knot is to chop it in half - generally speaking, bring employment, assets and wealth and most of the problems (hard core drug addiction, hopelessness, fatitude, violent crime, early death, etc.) will diminish. requiring more intense food regulation or labeling, jacking up the price of junkfood, publicly chopping off ronald mcdonald's nuts, etc is little different than re-arranging deckchairs on the proverbial titanic ok, so i'm sure you've been strawmaned again - sorry!

historically, to be happy was to be fat. when the fuck ever were poor people fat? it's always been shit to be poor, today or 10,000 years ago. the inner-city untermensh of today has plenty of bigger worries beyond the inability to readily obtain an organic latte of shade-grown coffee as w/ other parts of the healthcare debate, especially when comparing the differences between countries and classes, the bottom line is: how happy are you? THAT is the meaning of life, afterall, and pretty much the only damn reason to stick around. i never saw anybody cry over a pbr or a pork-chop.

if you fix the first few pitches of davis-holland expect to make enemies, but if you're fixing town crier yer merely preparing other wannabebigwallers for the genuine valley experience of being parked behind 20 others crews clusterfucking their way up the nose!

there's a reason many of us stick to aiding

i like to think of my belly as like "mr fusion" from back to the future - throw a bunch of bullshit in there - stale beer, rusty cans, anyold damn thing - fuckit, that and a head-full of crazy makes you fly! wonder what pirates made of their cuisine?

get an exploratory committee together - you n' me, let's take this genius to the fucking masses!

The issue is not really your degree of acculturation but your failure to acknowledge that people's ability to feed themselves properly depends on many factors out of their control, which includes their being aware that it is possible and desirable. pray tell how you comprehend the mind of the fat man better than me, who ain't that far from the honorific anyhow? tvash is right, what the hell are you really proposing that is gong to sweep the scourge of fatties from the landscape? for 99% of human history, humans were dying far earlier than the fatties of today, who in addition to sucking down quarter-pounders their whole life are getting the joy of 3 billion tv channels at their fingertips and a fucking chia-pet to suck them off between repeats of hee-haw? seems like we're in the land of milk n' honey here, but you're saying maybe honey's horseshit?