ivan

the entire last pitch of the n side route is a oak-intensive zone and can only be dealt w/ by a spraying or a vast gang of ignorant negroes and chicanos hybrid day! cragged at the zone in the shade till mid-evening, then went bath'n'drink'n at the boat launch at beacon till it was time for a run up the corner, topping out in the dark w/ geoff - just what the good doctor ordered!

i figured all this heat had broken one of teh intreweb tubes?

wow - couldn't even follow my own advice - bailed on overnighting on ground zero yday evening - even at 9 pm i was as wet as having been thrown in the river after just the first pitch - fuck its hot!

sure did convince me to stay home, watching bad tv and drinking sangria all day

ken has all the luck! you might add "saharan heat" to the general warning list - think i'm gonna go solo night climbing tonight to beat it!

if you die b/c your rope fails, its a sign dog didn't like you

jeebus. so did you rope solo above m'n'm or just free solo?

the best decision i ever made a few years ago was to solo the east ridge instead of the ne butt - looking forward to following yours and a few other footsteps some day - damn skippy on that bivy spot too, perhaps the finest one i've ever seen in the mountains? i think joshk and i had far more kicks there than you!

Trip: Index - 4 Dayz Alone Date: 7/13/2009 Trip Report: so my yosemite partner is literally hovering over my goddamn shoulder, fucking w/ my diction and whatnot, but since i'm gonna be gone for 2 more weeks, thought i'd at least put up my video and pix from the past week at index, where i sought valley practice and relief from the shit alpine weather of merry washington did all of stern farmer and various unknown pitches above, also all of narrow arrow overhang, then linked up town crier and green dragon from a portaledge on madsen(?) ledge (the last ending prematurely in a nocturnal and early morning thunderstorm) i'll get around to inserting the brilliant dialouge that shows the heart of the hard-on genius later, but for now, here they are, starting w/ the first pitch and a half of stern farmer fixed (i showed up in the late afternoon of day 1, and did what i could before dark): and some video, roughly in order? [video:youtube] [video:youtube] [video:youtube] [video:youtube] [video:youtube] [video:youtube] Approach Notes: across the tracks

[video:youtube]

i'm shit at effecting empathy at a miserable moment like this - i can't and don't choose to think of it - never an originalist, i can never think of the death of any person without these words of whitman in my head, though i don't even know if i agree w/ him - some part of me wants it to be true though, if only to make life more managable an excerpt from "song of myself" A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them; It may be you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps, And here you are the mother's laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues! And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. What do you think has become of the young and old men? What do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere; The smallest sprouts show there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceased the moment life appeared. All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

off for yosylum in the morning - it can't be raining there, right?

made my evening sleeping all by my lonesome on the upper index town wall interesting - and the frantic ascending of my fixed lines only to rap back down to the bivy and then to the groudn in the thunder and lightening and pouring rain even better!

last summer my extended fam rented a sweet house at the beach for a week - they had the high def dvd set of planet earth there, which has a great bit of film of great whites eating seals - my 4 year old daugher was totally into it until suddenly and inexplicably bursting into tears that lasted for hours, screamign " the seals, the seals!"

wow - shitty weather for being stuck out!

wait, the world works? say what you will about the current system, but the age-old reality of power struggles can never go away, just change form - the rich have always fucked the poor, and each other, to maintain their position, and the poor won't miss a beat to do the same themeselves - modern debt slavery, though now based on shiny pieces of modern plastic, still has its moorings in the ancient past - none of this will change, unless we kill everybody in the world - the modern system has its huge flaws, but do you really think the avergae man was better off a 1000 years ago? do you really think we hairless monkeys are capable of casting off all of ancestral baggage and creating a utopian society? fuck it, i'm going to 7/11 and buying some nachos - on credit

are they going to be okay, inshahallah?

palin/quayle dreamteam 2012!

No, no, no. Should be: "If my ear were a puss, I could fuck it!" i prever the far cruder... "he said w/ a grin as he wiped off his chin if my ear were a cunt i could fuck it!"

Trip: Dildorado - West Ridge Rapege Date: 7/3/2009 Trip Report: charlie don't surf, and joshk sure as fuck don't aid climb, so what for us star-crossed companions to do on my great big summa'thrills? dildo-rado - west ridge - dude - seriously - easy, long rock climb - you'll dig it i pick the soundtracks, the routes pick me - i try not to think too much about it - just go w/ a good goofy fuck and it'll all go well, no? so josh threw it out there, and for my sins i said sure so, here she looks from the dildo/dildo needle col, our descent/approach from pimpe-station #1 at the base of eldo's east ridge but wait, i'm getting ahead of meself - this was supposed to be a thing about how much i sport a happy hardon for frumpy frau jo'berg - seriously, how can anyone stomach walking up the eldorado creek approach, seeing this vision w/o wanting to run strait back down to the car to tear ass up to the pass for a texas-rules steel-cage death match w/ the Big Bitch? shit, no - this was going to be a cook-book tr - sangrias above the sibley! [video:youtube] an hour of slurping down these brainbusters, during which i swallowed a slurry of pesto, tunafish salad and french bread, left me enjoying hte wonders of the macro button on the new rat cam - i wanna treat some poor assholes herpephobia by wallpapering his whole room with pix like these but saying, "don't worry, it won't bite" fat, drunk n' stupid, i felt in prime condition to take on the final ascent to the eldo glacier and our evening's frivoliaties about the bivy - both josh and i sported the alpine stereo throughout the trip, and it smoothed over the awkward parts, like where we felt like we were supposed to be making meaningful conversation with each other, discussing our emotions and grand philsophical views of life, our taste in matchbox cars and feelings towards movies with gladiators in them - mostly the non-stop tunage served to Keep the Weasels on the Verge - LL Cool J's "i can't live w/o my radio" seemed of particuliar significance this trip [video:youtube] we bivy'ed on a prime chunk of real-estate, a bare slab by daypool (magically dissappears at night, only to reappear by day ) - we spent the evening drinking wine n' vodka, smoking poorly rolled cigarretes and eating lasagna, looking at all the lack-luster scenery why must the moon ruin all fine shots? by the time it had come to tend to sleep, i'd worked meself into rare-aould form - the stars had that extra-twinkle you look for in a premium sparkler, and the boom of warmth once in the tent and out of the wind turned tori amos' voice into a great golden bird that carried me to a far-away place, full of doe-eyed beauties capable of things the english-langauge was never meant to convey - at any rate, far, far away from filthy mother-fuckers such as yourselves emerging from the time-fog in the dawn, we set no speed records in getting packed up for our day's objective - a descent down to the toe of the west ridge, a quick run up, then a little-house-on-the-dead-injuns stroll down to camp for a rock-star finale en route to the dildo/dildo needle col, we enjoyed the local luge scene to some oakenfold melodies [video:youtube] the descent was strait-forward enough, and once at 6400 feet we easily traversed over to the base of the ridge - i distinctly remember thinking, thank fuck i don't have to walk back up THAT at this point we felt in line w/ the chi of the beta-bastard - broad gully up, over some slabs - check we stopped atop the coursing slabs for our last dose of water - did i mention i only brought a single liter bottle for storage - and it was blindingly bright n' hot? and that somehow it was already noon on a route that supposedly takes 9 hours to top out on? we weren't certain were this big bastard of a ridge was best to get on, but close as we could glean from the beta, it involved getting into a chimney-ish thing that would climb to the crest in a few pitches - this snow blobbish area looked just right - the only problem, upon getting up to it, was that is was protected by a giant moat, only surmountable by a vertical-limitish inspired full run n' jump onto the blob we sniffed off to the left of the moat/blob, figuring if we could just reach the crest of the ridge, all would be fine from there - figuring on goode'ish style climb, we'd left the rock shoes at home - this didn't help when the first line we tried turned into a pro-less smear fest that led to the Land of Little Hope - we stepped back down to the glacier and went even further left - deceptively difficult traversing on the generally crackless, featureless gritty slabs left us quickly despondent - why the fuck was it so hard to get on route? 2 pitches up - josh follows me to the "don't fall dumbass, there's no anchor here" belay goddamit, why does reality always have to get between me n' my mellow? roasting in the sun, dark rocks painful to the touch, we opted to eschew trying to regain the snow-blob chimney as the traverse over appeared suck-ass - instead josh took us up a rope-length, then i another along a leftwards traverse below rotten roofs that ended in both of us looking at each other, the time, our minimal water and non-high-tech shoes, our whole busted framed-out take on life and all and resoundingly resolved, the twain of us, to "fuck this shit" i'd like to forget about the next 6 hours of so of my life - i recall combining raps on rotten blocks and horns to downclimbing to finally re-reaching the snow and the bizarrely steep slabs below that, then the awful gut-rending retracing of our steps back up 2000 feet to camp, the western sun savaging us each step upon the way - the cruel twist of josh's ipod containing some, but not all of the "use your illusion" albums - shivering in the sudden dusk of the "unsavory gulley" below the col - i reached camp a defeated man, a mean man, a mike tyson biting off your ear even though i'm still gonna lose goddamitt kinda man - i crawled into the bottom of my sleepng bag and tried not to think about the cavalier decision to make my second dinner of the trip a "character-builder" i.e. essentially nothing eventually some hot water reduced the chills of the heat stroke i'd worked up, and the night did it's magic thing - i drifted from my mental moorings and ran along a swiftly filling tide, the dam-stocks of the earth burst and bedlam flowing before them, a cacophony of voices and sounds, full of the proverbial sound and fury that signifies nothing - i can't remember a bit of it now, but i recall it was a fine example of something, that's for certain 'round 11 or so in the following a.m., the hub-bub of megateam after megateam strolling on by inspired us to emerge into the blast furnace, eat our paltry breakfast (yum...stale bread and chilied mangoes!) and lie around alot, contemplating an excursion to the top - we recalled it was america-does-you-in-the-ass-and-brags-about-it-to-its-friends-day - we spent a far part of the mornign screaming: "america - fuck yeah!" [video:youtube] finally we motivated up the hill - it was my first visit to eldo's top, but i was familiar w/ the uber-famous summit ridge shot, though perhaps not to see it so deeply resembling a frozen version of the somne, circa 1916. we ran down from the summit while the masses plyed their ropes up and down the Savage Crevasse Field! [video:youtube] "does this mountain make my johnson look small?" the walk out was wonderful of course - scorching - no food except 5 little gummy guys - you know, the kind that look like plastic toy soldiers and taste like sour apples? my favorite is the grenade throwing dude - what a hero - total sgt york bullshit - it inspired me to starve, and to get momentarily lost near the waterfalls, and in the boulder field - we took comfort in seeing the broken on the rack and crucified by the wayside crew on 9 or so guided climbers miserably played out along the lower trail, the lead gaggle complete w/ member passed on in the middle of the steep path, collecting talus the evenign of the 4th of july was a wonderful thing - we bathed in the sibley and drank shiraz - we laid around marblemount-me and drank shiraz - we cursed at good food for being closed and drank shiraz - we laid behind a boxcar, smoking all kinds of things, drinking shiraz - we barely managed to walk out of the buffalo's bullsack or wahtever it's called and drive to the ross lake overlook on the 20, where we passed out by the curbside in the twilight glow, the feast of a thousand fuck-all mosquitoes that made our lives needlessly hellish by sunrise at 4:20, whereupon we fled in horror to mazama, too whooped even for a washington pass approach - some coffee at the general store inspired us to go to fun rock, but the sweltering heat and our radiating sun-flesh flushed us like cosmic turds into the methow, whereupon the day improved substantially i enjoyed the tree by the general store with its barbed wire and pole locked in a borg-ish struggle w/ the juniper that was once behind it don't get excited kids, i've been trying to reduce my smoking by insisting on only the worst hand-rolled, dried out bullshit leaf cigs modern man can make - the upgrade on the $3 walmart white hat i heartily endorse though we anchored the cooler in the swirling wonder of the methow and spent the next 6 hours jumping off the mega-fuck-fun boulder across from the prime rib parking lot, weathering out an unceasing torrent of tourists who no-doubt disdain drunken, farmer-tan-fried redneck phreaks such as meself - i enjoyed meself at least fuck climbing - shade and rivers meant to climb all kinds of glorious thigns after this rest day, but rain and clouds at wa pass compelled our return to seattlestan and the fine female forms of fremont

it's a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart my favorite cramponless ascent of the hoodwand was when i fell down the west crater rim while trying to put me spikes back on after rashly taking htem off in the slop - had to chop steps all the way back to the top to reclaim them

then call me when you get two. you're just jealous 'cuz you don't even have a single cock to clip

...whose cock was so big he could suck it...

so can i come back from my banishment in seattle yet, or do i have to settle for climbing at index for the next week?