ivan

wait, emumclaw's in OREGON?!?

i saw that good work you started on there, geoff - nice! it really was a shitty place to try to stand around and get geared up...

how'yre toes feeling now, john?

looks misty "free" climbing (for kevbone)

hmm, not entirely a free move on the .11a crack - there is crazy air under you as you step out to start this, the 3rd pitch

nice, and ttk moves w/n 1 of tying for the tr-count lead!

i applied for a summer job cooking bbq when i was 20 - the meth-addicted crazy intense chef looked at my app, then said only "what's your favorite spice?" i'd never thought about it before, mostly b/c i was still eating ramen and had only red robin seasoning at home - "paprika?" - "ak! paprika is a bitch-spice - it adds nothing, only makes noticable what is there! i can't believe i'm hiring you."

well, it wouldn't be a beacon TR w/o something to argue about what i mean is, as you notice, it difficult to climb up to the gap on the ridge w/o touching parts of all 3 of the routes listed below - it's more like 1 route w/ a number of variations possible then 3 totally indepedent lines - i have the same problem w/ the winter delight/sufficiently breathless area above the first tunnel - i usually end up mixing and matching as to adding bolts/pins - if the fa said it's cool, then it's fine w/ me - the pro is pretty goddamn sketchy along the way (thus my rambling over the parts of all the routes in a constant search for something positive) and there are several parts of the lines i ignored precisely b/c there's no pro and nasty fall consequences - there is still one fixed pin that marks a very fun traverse and young-warrior-esque strenous sidepull around a corner to get a yellow alien in

there's no oak on route fo shizzle - pretty certain we stayed out of it on the top out too

awesome - been wondering were in the hell it had gone - how did joe get it? you looked might cold waiting down there to start up free for all dave! you gotta talk nate into dragging your ass up this climb man - very cool setting and novel views - you just need an army of coolies to scrub the hamburger sized lichens out

yeah, i've never understood how they could have justified squeezing so many lines into 1 narrow area - i could have mentioned that the first true pitch of jensen's is the dirty, shitty, stupid 5.0 thing around the corner, but i'd imagine most folks would want to start right off the ground on some real climbing your anchor at the notch kev is the only decent bolt belay on the whole climb, but it was diminished somewhat by the fact that a hurricane force wind was being funneled through the gap

Trip: Beacon Rawk - Jackanapes on Jensens Ridge (5.11a or 5.10 A1 III 5 pitches) Date: 11/15/2008 Trip Report: today was the 33rd anniversary of the raging tempest that sunk the emdmund fitzgerald - it was a fitting day to be at beacon, where despite the gay promises of weekend sun, the reality of brisk, windy weather was that i wore 3 layers all day, my face ended storm-kist, corneas shredded by wind-born lichen on this skanky-dirty route the sound track for this tr - for your personal listening pleasure [video:youtube]v=99rOzMVtcx4 the route - jensens ridge is the dominant and sickeningly soaring sw ridge of beacon rock - i'm sad to realize this TR has little hope of achieving the erstwhile fame of my late silver crow/axe of karma debacle b/c it lacks a certainly contreversialness - you can see the scandoulous panel of silver crow on the upper right corner of this route phote though - this is the arena of terror - this is the fucking edge! me on the thin, dirty, scarey first pitch - geoff took the pix while waiting for jim n' company i fell right around here on grassy, slick, cold rock mike following near the top of pitch 2 - this is a fun one - it's very short, but i had to tension into the super-steep, exposed finger crack - the route is plagued by thick, hoary, abudant lichen, which makes its presence know w/ authority on this pithc i'm hoping miker throws in his photos for the cum-shot pitch, the core reason for taking on this rarely touched classic - it's got what you want - extremely difficult, overhanging thin crack w/ horrific exposure followed by a godawful "mindbending offwidth" that weighs in at 11a, but for me was more like 5.10 A1 - it easily takes 3 #3s and #4s camalots, plus 2 #5s - this was my 2nd lead of this pitch, and i can't help but think i'd do it faster w/ proper aiders - as it was i had to use several slings as stirrups as the incredible lichen-factor and steepness make free climbing essentially impossible for non-wheatie free-basers the incredible 4th pitch - we climbed the right side crack system - very steep, very pumpy and a lot of small gear to start w the the real threat of ledging out on a fall - it gets very cool when you suddenly can start stemming intot he left crack - a 30 year old pin marks the inverted Y interstection recently cleaned by jeff thomas, yet still totally obscure, west face climbs on beacon rock an unusual beacon rock climbing view - the impressive talus field below the west face the anchor at the top of pitch 3 - 2 80's era smc 1/4 inch rusted ass bolts - 3 small cams in the crack above top roped the second though looking down on joe healy from the top of pitch 3 - joe's at the top free for all maybe? - of interest are the bolts, center-frame, for silver crow/axe of karma, which would come up from the bottom of the frame - a blackberry shrub appears to threaten the pipeline headwall exit onto the anchors looking back at mike at the belay for pithc 4 - i walked down the ledge top to look at silver crow's topout - notice the old bolt, center frame, in a sea of thick ass lichen - i ripped off an ancient scrap of webbing and excavated several inches of moss/pine needles/dirt to unearth the bolt - not certain of its purpose - perhaps to protect a climber comign up from silver crow for jensen's last pitch? looking up from the lonely bolt - very interesting aid lines to the right of the jensens exit - the left side crack is a 6-8" chimney - the right crack is thinner, but has a series of giant stacked blocks atop it that might suck the awesome exit roof crack on the two lanes to the right of the pitch 4 of jensens looking down on pitch 3 of jensens - the "mindbending off-width" is in the center - the top of the first pitch is in the sunlight below mike arriving at the sketacular belay at the top of pitch 4 - my ass cheeks splayed either side of the divide, ready to go whichever way necessary to stop The Great Descent - 1 pitch above this (our 5th on the route) brought us through poison-oak less terrain (i fucking hope!) of moss, mank and brush to the railings of the trail and a whole herd of twittering tourists, none of whom were hawt dammit the pale setting sun over the western columbia river gorge - fierce winds on the this day, the anniversary of the november storm that sunkt he edmound fitzgerald looking down on the river from 500 feet up - notice the sharp contrast between the extremly turbid, churned up and silt-laden water created by the recent intense rains - the shorelines are calmer as the sun set, mike and i finished out the day by escorting old larry up to his bivy at the paryt ledge - i reveled in my relative light-weightedness and led all the pitches of the se corner in the blustery dark - a most titillating rap down the dutchman on a single strand rounded out the day Gear Notes: total, for the whole route, assuming your mortal like me 2-3 blue, green, yellow, red aliens 2 .75, 1, 2, 5 camlots 3 3, 4 single set of nuts 15+ draws Approach Notes: never seen so many shrooms!

f'n'a - awesome beta gatherage! so sounds like good cruising?

a great feeling, and a sneaky one too, to have porked that fabled whore life for a few rare minutes, good n' proper!

alpine fires in safe conditions i'll always cherish the dumbass look on my ra's face, that first year of college, the day that the gideons showed up and passed out free bibles to all of us on the way to class - roomie and i got like 20 of them, built a bonfire on the sidewalk outfront of our door and lit it up - ra walks by - "what are you doign?" "burning bibles - want one?" - a look of complete incomprehension - slack jaw - open mouth - furrowed brown - seconds pass in silience, marred only by crackling genesis' and exodus' - reboot - program failure - warm reboot - mangled response - "but you're going to set the sidewalk on fire" "uh...it's raining...and its concrete?"

what's aslan doing to that poor centaur?

say what you will about the mounties as an organization, but their text book definitely deserves a tug - how many folks out there taught themselves to climb, largely on the strength of that opus magnus? x1

didn't i note that on like page 2 (and yet call on it to make me spray-famous (i did it ma! i'm the king of the world!!!!!!!)))(fuck, how many ellipsis in was i?) wish i could do the jet-setter cragging-lifestyle thang - i gotta get by w/ dank ass beacon stone and hella-thin craptacular hood ice

steam-tunneling - also a favored activity at uva (good to see you fucking rednecks were good for somethign) a trip to tri-cities the year after college lead to a clibm up the s side of hood which just blew my fucking doors off and led to a serious OCD addiction to all things clmibing - i remember me n' me friend bob doing our first climbs on limestone death-traps in shenendoah park, then spending the whole next week replaying every motion in me mind - sickness! after seneca it was done...

i'm waaaay past you - i: - run a half-marathon everytime joe quotes someone and then writes a full paragraph point-by-point retaliation - do 50 pullups everytime pink puts in a pop-up lizard - do a brace of bench presses using me wife and 2 kids each time kevbone posts ANYTHING - run 3000 vertical feet on the stairmaster each time geoff can be dragged out of his lurker-ness to weigh in - and jerk off w/ a self-imposed deadline of 30 seconds anytime i double-post b/c i'm so haaawt waiting for the next reply

Ha, you have me dead to rights there; sorry, I just haven't seen it when it's been on display. and see there mark, we can all get together for a big homo-huddle now - joe can admit he's wrong sometimes! i'm off to the (gay) gym - see all you wankers out there 2morrow

my favorite knock-knock joke knock knock who's there control freak - now you say control freak who!?!

when i read this it makes me think you're climbing w/ a comet I was. His first climb at Beacon was walking down the trail, stopping, looking up at Stone Rodeo and onsight sending what in all likelyhood was the FFA. what's the story on his name then? - i was just assumign you were clmbing w/ some man-hating hypenating-chick dammit! all this blather makes me wanna coerce one of my would-be partners tomorrow into ditching the jensen's ridge plan! just so we could get bill's next episode headlines!

it's all for the greater good of getting me my flamey icon on my tr! this is the edge!!! you can't quit now until we have 1500 views or 100 replies dammit! kev, joe is right about the right place to belay from on this pitch (too much of a traverse in the middle of what would be a monster pitch of 60 meters), and probably right about the impending shrapnel not hurting folks below (the belayer would be fine for sure), though i for one was not happy at what i figured would happen to me as the leader if the thing went. a week later though i'm very willing to stick my head back into the cannon though. as far as being a drunken-ape climber, i think i can be plenty delicate if need be joe - i got up that first crux on takes fist that buggered you and that requires plenty of balance and finesse w/o gear to yank on

when i read this it makes me think you're climbing w/ a comet