ivan

Trip: Far & Wide - Hood Rain-Wracked & Beacon Besodden Date: 11/29/2008 Trip Report: 5 days off for thanksgiving - sure as fuck'n'puking on st. paddy's day there had to some adventure to be had? but what? n face of hood? some other hood tomfoolery? christ, if i do another beacon tr some one'll have my balls for it! but then again, i DO want to spend another night portaledging it faint memories of merry machinations the anniversary passing hard upon the very day the furies fastened this wonder upon us, 1 year ago today so fate played out as it must - we are all sinners in the hands of an angry god - mike got sick, no doubt from our damp hide n' seek adventure tuesday when we, as good pilgrims must from time 2 time, circumambulated our Holy Monolith in the drizzle - billbob was keen for a hood jaunt though, and the forecast was, at least a few days off, quite positive but meteorologists were all abused as children and they have their vengeance on us cruelly - saturday faded from fabled hero conditions to clouds and crap, but the holiday dying, we had to at least have a go at her corpse so...the reid then...fuck camping, no time...christ the high for saturday is to be high - freezing level at 10k during the day - we'll have to hit illumination at daylight's taint these plans seemed vouchsafed by the Blessed Virgin as we laid them in the skanktacular bar called charlies at govie's camp - coulda stayed awhile and had my way w/ any number of poster-pinups on the wall and whanot - ordered a rueben for later and a jubalale for now - billbob story-told over tall whiskeys - tales of cocaine and goomahs and godlessness - juvenile high-jinxes - lonesome valley - guns - jesus-fuck, how about this ocean of life, deep w/ bullshit, we all swim in! at timberline at the witching hour - where the hell is the weather we were promised by that prim-faced phuck on the tellie? strong wind, lashing rain licked the carpace of that monstrousity billbob calls car - a mighty fine camp of itself on such a night i must admit - alarms set for 130 for a 230 start if we are to have non-suicide temps on the west side things were no different 2 1/2 hours later - i had little interest in waking - racked out w/ my rucksack cuddled in my arms - called her sally, called her betty, shit, called her a lot of things and didn't mean a word of it - things were no better out, but dammit, here we are and let no man say we weren't equal to the task how i hate to harp on my poverty, but night's like these lay it bare - my goretex garments long ago gave up the ghost, and i've figured how to get by on the volcanoes w/ soft-shells - i go ghetto-style as i must, and flourish despite it, but this was a morning that showed some serious limitations by the time we'd reached silcox's altitude i was properly done in - the sole memory my brain will allow me now, just 24 hours later, is of the waterfall that ran w/o letup off my hood, my whole left-side wind-numbed, my plastic boots' burgeoning puddles, the coursing water down my long underwear, like an old man gone wrong so little snow up there now - the lift station has a door in the bottom usually obscured - we stopped to take snuff - i could have been no wetter if i jumped in the ocean w/ all my clothes on - i set them up on the protruding rebar and wrung buckets of brown water out of them that cheeky bastard billbob has the proper toys though, and had every reason to laugh at my sodden state - i would have challenged him to a duel w/ pistols at dawn, but the fact that i had to take off my shoes to get at my soaked socks, combined w/ the fear that i might damage his cigarettes in the contest, kept me from it in such moments there is really only one thing to do so we tarried for awhile - waiting to see what would develop - the clock was ticking on when we'd need to be at the gap by, and the unceasing tumout outside boded quite poorly - worse, soaked as i was, i would not warm w/ walking and in the wind soon those delicious tendrils of hypothermy would take hold - the slack jaw, the fumbling, the idiocy so easily missed amidst the background mumblings of my garbled conciousness - with no reason to expect things to improve, we went down - i am humbled - after maybe a 100 climbs on that mountain, a new lesson - dont' leave the timberline parking lot if its fucking raining so, what now? well, the forecast was for things to be dry and good back home, so shit, maybe this tempest was the beacon-wand's holy-fury at my neglecting here? rumors had run rampant along the gorge wind the previous night of a great gathering of The Brethern in the offing at the Land of the Little Peope - billbob has been turned off to rock-climbing since some churlish baffoon ruined him on it last winter solstice, but i thought i could make up for my poor performance a few hours earlier by taking him on the adventure-raps down the n face, then join da crew at the ledge - shit, its 7 a.m. and we've been awake 6 hours, but let's make it happen! we got views of the cloud wraiths wriggling over the n side as we drove off toward hood river at beacon the forecast also was woefully fucked - drizzle and damp and cloud-murk - luckily every stitch of clothing i had was still soaked - ah well, at least its warmer geoff and his bro kyle rolled in first, as i sat smoking and pondering the stimulant-based-blankness rapidly crossing my mind - in the end bill and i hiked up to the summit, but the dampness and cloud and my own miserable conduct seemed to disuade him of our course, so plans changed for the 3rd time that day - he was to walk down while i'd rap down to geoff, get his keys, rap the rest of the way off, meet bill in the lot, move my wet-shit from his rig to geoff's, part ways, then rejoin the boys even as the next round of Big Players rolled in (in the form of jimmy o and old mother-frakking larry) the brothers were already well ensconced in their hobo-camp when i arrived as i started to rap out w/ the keys, jim peered over from above i decided to fix my single 60 m alpine rope at the top of the dutchman rather than do the endless trip down jills - scared the holy-hell out of myself though as its pretty thin and the kermantle apparently has been corrupted w/ fabric accumulating in the rap-device in addition to the 3 liters or so of water it shipped over the course of the descent - made many a merry prayer to allah and buddha and every other half-rate-hilly-billy-prophet as the rap proceeded sadness in such sweet parting, but the ever-generous billbob made it easier by handing over a honey-bun, a beer and a half-pack - much appreicated amigo! best of all though was the belay device, as rapping on a munter hitch might have resulted in hersey-squirts in my shorts rejoiningg The Brethern, i encountered geoff already well along on his new aid-line - larry gave me a fireman's belay so i could take this shot, which shows the arboreal nature of the route for the first time in weeks i was out at beacon and there was no raging breeze - now it was more eerie - steady drizzle - gaint pregant drops from the overhanging wall above banging on the tarp - thick clouds, murky river-views - the air thick and ponderous eventually geoff grew weary of his adventure and turned the crazy-train over to larry larry promptly inserted his fine gallic probiscis into the back of nice wide crack to search for his ass it's a fine line, but i wonder where in the hell it'll end up - it'll be exciting for certain, especially to keep it iron free excellent times that afternoon - musical chairs under the dripping tarp - bullshitting - but as night approaches, jim gets fired up, and besodden as i was, i was eager to join forces and get ourselves down - jim and i went first - i got this pic of him coming donw to me while larry was still wailing away jim rushed off - larry remained at the ledge to commune w/ his humors for the night - the brothers came down and kindly conveyed me to gresham - i came home, bathed my kids, ate 10 lbs of mashed potatoes n' gravy, then slept on the hard-floor while my wife killed krauts and japs, called to duty as she was by The Great Gamer in the Sky Gear Notes: fortitude ignorance anger Approach Notes: vanouver to gresham to gov camp to silcox to hood river to beacon

Because the religion that spawns these idiots will continue to do so until it is forced to reform from within or until sufficient pressure is brought to bear upon its more civilized adherents to stand up and be counted. yet, during ww2, we castigated hitler and his nazis for their acts of terror, not the christian religion they came from and to a substantial extent used as the justification for their actions? nor did we merely pass it off as the inevitable result of european civilization? attacking the religion of islam only sprouts more heads on the hydra - the more every-day muslims feel their religion is under attack, the more they will join the ranks of terrorist organizations at any rate, doesn't this discussion of terrorist motivations seem a bit one dimensional? there are no doubt many other motivations at work - nationalism, desire for power, resentment of power, etc. comparing indian terrorists to saudi terrorists to afghan terrorists misses the unique nature of each of their beefs, and the religion of islam is merely a tool used to achieve thier political desires, no? (just like every western terrorist organization makes appeals to christianity, such as the kkk or ira?)

its seem strange that, after an act of terrorism, so many folks would spend their time bitching about and blaming the act on people other than those who ACTUALLY planned and carried out the attack

falling makes you really evaluate whether you like climbing or not, eh? i've had a decent # of truly frightening things happen climbing, but either i'm so in love w/ the sport or stupid they haven't given me much pause. there are safer things to do for sure

sure LOOKS like trout-creek climbing

you clearly weren't high enough when you saw it

found'em'indeed dave - and still connected to the same biner, so i don't for the life of me understand how you only saw a biner flyign through the air, and not the 2 kites attached to them

TR ADDENUM: unmentioned in the paltry text above was da epic losing of da extra set of etriers at the top of pitch 4 - awkward reach down to unclip the last big cam when going free into the chamber below the last bolt anchor - somehow i unclipped the biner from my daisy chain and the whole works was lost to the tempest - did the rim-job w/ just a single pair, which detracted from da sickness returned in the gloaming 2night w/ miker (figured, since i'd borrowed 'em from him, he might as well go find where i lost 'em!) - totally mismangled head moment - lost and schwacking through the dripping bush - wandered out onto the talus and down virginal thick carpets of lush moss, interspersed w/ pristine beer and water bottles cast off from the west side trail - how foolish to hope to find the etriers in this wasteland, but holy-fuck, is that them hanging of the lower branches of the giant tree w/ the bizarre park sign direclty bolted into the living bark, declaring "no climbing!?!" (well, okay, i'll be certain not to climb on THAT tree) great views of jensen's from down there - The Brethern must reclaim those routes - jeff thomas put in a start this summer, but much more is needed - then climb them while someone's taking pix thought about posting a seperate TR for the circumnav w/ made by bashing down through the thorns and oak back up to the traintrack, but figured i shouldn't make a move on tvash just yet made a day of it by pushing on to denalidaves to swip miker's jug back from the snarling dog of death!

Red Dawn

i thought psychic wound ended at the dutchman anchor? i did the upper pitch of the dutchman this summer.

to desist from spray for a member, can someone confirm if that is st peters all angelic in the fall sun?

and, straightly, other folks love it when trip reports are spray-free

f'n'awesome'bitzes!

thanx for the invite wayne - i can't tarry further away from the ranch than hood this week regretably - if someone would quit fucking around and invent a teleporter already...

it was a pleasant diversion from the big cam-defying funky crack/chimney, and when it ended in nastiness, i was able to lean way out and get a #4 back into the left system and follow it up - was dismayed at first to think i wouldn't be able to get back to the jensen's notch (the rimjob spits you out in this very funky and cool cave, painted in this thick wild orange, small-grained lichen) and have to make a sketchy anchor, but luckily a small face crack and some decent chimney climbing got me back to the happy place

Trip: Beacon Rawk - Jensen's Rimjob (5.8 C2 (5.12?) III - 5 pitches) Date: 11/23/2008 Trip Report: do you have a shit-ton of big-gear lying 'round the house and no clue where to put it to use? then here's the route for you! inside the vortex today - dry-heaved and almost blew-chunks all over myself after getting a lung-full of lichen denalidave = patient belayer, here pimped out w/ all our colorful shit we skipped the optional hard pitch to get to the notch - climbing the original first pitch in hurricane force winds was challenge enough cool weather - is that st. peters across the way? the wind made for trippy waves the .11a finger crack at the start of pitch 3 - did it w/ aiders this time - note the hurricane carrying off my etriers - spent most of the day cursing and trying to reclaim them can't say that i'm the first to have climbed the route i'm dubbing "jensen's rimjob," but there's no history or route name in the olson guide - it's a fun, aid-tacular optional end to jensen's ridge that ultimately returns to the nothc a half pitch below the trail - we used all the big gear we brought - was hoping ot stick to the left, wide chimney the whole way, but was forced right - eventually had to zig-zag back left to avoid giant stacked block death land - veeeery overhanging! dusk fell as we topped out the last technical pitch and scrambled up to the trail - venus and jupiter approach - brilliant, blustery day Gear Notes: your menu of big gear 1 #6 2 #5 2 #4 1 #3.5 2 #3 3 #2 smaller shit 2 #1 2 .75 3 .5 3 yellow alien 2 green alien 1 blue alien couple big nuts camels Approach Notes: the old reliable

Where did you get the idea Ivan and I were going to bolt at Beacon? maybe since he heard that i ordered the only existing version of that cool bolt-gun thingy from "vertical limit?"

did he also have a thing for spinanch and girls named olive oil?

nobody for sunday?!? the forecast is awesome!

that's a good question - are there any other questions?

is it the same as the second rule?

He was the leader of the ANC's armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe and lead a bombing campaign. Mandela was a violent terrorist. yeah, i knew that bill, i don't knwo that i;m suggesting anything other than that we make our own monsters when we imprison folks who have done nothing wrong

i think most folks would acknowledge mandela is a remarkable man, and not the sort of person to compare the rest of the world to though - he also got his revenge, in a sense, by winning (seeing apartheid destroyed and becoming president) - if he'd been pardoned or released a decade earlier, when teh bad guys were still in power, who's to say he wouldn't have become a violent terrorist?