ivan

if you've ever had campylobacter you wouldn't dare fart for weeks

7/31 - lucky #13 - lap 2 - a trip to tower and success seemingly in hand after a mort more work - a week w/ the wife at art museum's n' doing ya'd wo'k n' f'ck knows what else - hips hurt - knees hurt - seem to have the planter fascist-fukyu in both my heels now - keerist, i'm a few months short of a solid douglas adams' 42 n' i'm feeling auooooold sunday morning after a solid sleep in - a week w/ the fam at the beach tomorrow so this was it, and not much time to spare as i needed to set the ya'd in order before we fuckered off beacon near noon - the lot like a gypsy caravan before the nazis knew what's what - cool n' grey - bro'seph n' his benji-buddy in buckling down n' ready to bound up dastardly wandered up the corner w/ a head half-right - crowds like always of course, and a poor dam anchored off and leaving on the travese tree giving me the heebie-jeebies - the crux like cream these days - i don't know what my feet are doing, but i just smile and saunter on fresh air and following breeze - fun times - the ramble down - beers and the long babbling road back home...

"for every one of us living in this world means waiting for our end let she who can achieve glory before death when a warrior is gone that will be her best and only bulwark"

sounds like he's got the requisite length, but as every lady-boi knows, you can't bend a hard dick in half hoping to be out in the fabled beacon-land come this weekend - ain't seen much of the wife this summer so spending some solid-thyme w/ her this week doing the lovely - jeebus, even got some art n' culture in me over in portland town today at the picture-placey museum thang - fine fresh ramen noodles sucked down in the presence of floppy homeless folks too

come on, kanye doesn't deserve to DIE

august is a crap month for fucking around on hood but...if ya gotta...go play on the north side - ice crag n' spelunk on the elliot or see if you can make the sunshine route go or maybe the cooper spur

8/22-24 - trip #9 mid-summer doldrums done set in - big trips south n' east n' even north all spent n' its me on the couch doubting my own existence at 2 in the fucking morning but the tower project is something to keep the head out of the oven for, so on a thursday evening bill fetched me in his big blue new ride i'm calling lucille until he latches upon a better moniker for the the motherfucker we rattled off the miles north and reached the forest road after dark - reckoning on decent weather friday we bedded down under the open sky only to be rudely awoken after midnight by the beginnings of a mighty rain that kept on coming the whole day to come - fortunately lucille is commodious enough and we went on to spend most of the next 24 hrs in there alternatively napping n' reading n' listening to howard stern on the satellite saturday dawned gray, nonetheless we did the super-shuffle-stumble down the trail - this was the first time we could drive to the burley mtn trailhead and it proved easy enough in a high-clearance ride - better yet, we found a doable shortcut, which gets you from the hardtop to the trailhead in a little over 5 miles, providing you don't get yerself kilt by driving off the absurdly steep hillside or kamikaze it into the crater-sized ravines running through the middle of the track its so damned murderous to try to jug n' haul up 600 feet of overhanging fixed lines that we figured from here on out we should just drop in from the top and finish the fucker off that way - my first great fear was we wouldn't find anything anchor worth on the summit to get started, but after a number of hijinx that got sorted out and a day later we'd put in the final pitch (which i hope will be #13 as all rehab programs need one) amazing views on the wall near the summit - holy shit, this thing is gonna go! 1000 feet of accessible, insane big walling n' all you need is a buncha draws and a couple hooks

this is not 'nam, dude

summit is definitely lacking something - perhaps a water fountain or a zip line?

whole damn place is falling apart - try not to trundle when the oil train's going by, eh?

i reckon johnny cash covered both the question n' the picture pretty well here, no? [video:youtube] sam johnson's hints at the answer here: "There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be opposed."

the first pitch i don't think has anything to do w/ your climb, though maybe the first 30 feet did - the second pitch i doubt you followed after the eyebrow (the first blue X in gecko's pic) and would assume you went left from there, if you were on it at that point the first pitch i initially cleaned, wolfgang fine tuned that pitch but he never got back to finishing it.... the second pitch i took a left turn at the blue x and then up to a tree... i had bigger plans for this route, but i was saving for the closure and i never came back to the northwest after i broke my hand on the zodiac... it was a big stink when we did that second pitch too, the cops and rangers were there and a bunch of tourist in a huff cause we were hoggin all the fun the coolest part about doing these two pitches was climbing them with jim... cool - so we are on the same page then, no? on the first pitch, the most natural leader tendency is, as topher n' company have shown lately, to go off left where the pro is (which largely means not even starting stone soup p1) - going straight up the 1st pitch of stone soup is only possible, short of suicidal heroics, with the 3 bolts that are currently there - ya'll certainly could have top-roped the entirety of stone soup p1, but leading it would have moved you well off left after 30 vertical feet am i wrong or are we really not arguing about a damn thing?

plenty of exploration still going on in the vital art of how to be a raging asshole

being near boulder in the first place was a curve ball i hadn't even contemplated, so hadn't done my homework - it was also hot as hell and thunder-stormy - our plan had been true-true wilderness, and the jaunt up to devil's tower seemed a minor inconvenience after all that easting...at any rate, i wasn't near thin enough or pretty enough to hang out near all them boulder college kids all i know about geology i learned from watching "the rock of ages" and flipping through beckey sermons at high speed in search of info on obvious couloirs - sure reminded me of touloumne granite though....

the first pitch i don't think has anything to do w/ your climb, though maybe the first 30 feet did - the second pitch i doubt you followed after the eyebrow (the first blue X in gecko's pic) and would assume you went left from there, if you were on it at that point

the internuts are the 3rd pole

probably work just fine if you could also show them a high-res picture of what the books cover's look like

C-

gnar-gnar

be careful what you wish for, that-there goode can be a realle aoulde bitch

7/17 - day 12 - lap 1 of the summer - woke up late, this last day of bachelor freedom, bound to recover a dog at noon, despite my vexations - just enough time for a sleep in n' a big breakfast n' some beer, then bounced out the door for a lap - musta passed 4 parties of 4-climbers each on the corner? jeebus, the man could make a fortune if'n he claimed for each

Trip: Devil's Tower, the Winds, Darrington n' etc - Date: 7/17/2016 Trip Report: the earth spun round the fiery orb once more, me spending it flittering n' wasting n' laying low n' steadily graying n' avoiding the heat of cc.com tr glory - musta done something worth word-smithing over during all that time, but been content to commit it all to the mind-palace n' no place else - gotta reckon i'm just getting ready to lay easy in my grave - we all rot alone... promising start to a pleasing summer - the kids n' the wife n' heading south - oregon sand dunes, hill clambering w/ my boy wulf after the lesser elements in the family wussed out - redwoods, sure big trees, but so? - a new take on yosemite, family camping at wawona n' glacier point - my big brother and a niece i'd never met in tow - good times around the fire, sure wish i could make this sorta shit happen more often - san francisco - lounging round the pool n' partaking in the life of a new-age patrician then it was a sacramento airport n' setting'em all on a plane n' heading north, trailing smoke n' 28 hrs of "the conquering tide" - time parted like water as the sun went west and i made my many weary miles back north a quick pitstop for a good burgundy drunk - an empty house like an echoing tomb, save the whir of fans mike and i'd hatched a plan for a summer of new-shit - reckon it'd been too many summers in a row of big-walling like a fucking fuck-faced whale in the valley, it was time for a change - so we figured we'd head east to the wind river range, land of of fables n' fucking fred beckey n' jim bridger-sized heroes camas at dawn, me scooping up our boy n' balefuls of bullshit n' roaring off toward the bitter badlands, soaring past a million mcdonalds n' truckstops n' tawdry landmarks of the honkus americanus on the Long Road towards wyoming troubled developed along the way, none of it necessary if for fuck-sake's everyone would just throw away their gawddamn smart-phones - mike's ma recently diagnosed w/ that saddest of sad ailments that besets the elderly, yet somehow she'd launched on a solo road-trip of her own out to boulder, colorado, without anyone in the family saying shit - by the time we were within eye-shot of the wind's, mike n' his sister had a roiling conversation going across the continent about how they were going to find the wayward mater familias, who was fuck-knows-where near salt lake city 18 hours later we managed to get the nsa to track down her coordinates and we rolled into her hotel room at 2 a.m. in a most surreal of situations - i set to the serious business of getting to sleep and letting slip the tenuous bonds of the Stranger's responsibility the next morning i woke alone in mournful malodorous n' moldy room n' amidst a smoky-haze of wildfires set off after mike n' his ma in the Ghost towards boulder, still binging n' gourging on the "conquering tide" she delivered safe, we got some good times at the flat-irons, which i'd always wanted to roam through - we figured on making a big bite into the drive to devil's tower, so settled for just soloing a big long slab-route on the 2nd iron - we managed to get down just before a big ole thunder storm rolled through rolling north towards devil's tower through the roaring clouds n' downpours we pierced wyoming's border, only to discover those dear bitches done divorced the vending of beer from that of goddamn gas - non-plussed, we wound up on the side of a road in what appeared to be godless badlands but the morning revealed to be a vast fracking-field, well-heads as regular as wet-panties at a prince concert... woke early, wet w/ dew, to the roar of trucks rattlign by w/ billions of gallons of frack-fluid, n' set on our way, intent to get up and down the durrance route before another afternoon storm washed us away devil's tower loomed up in the early-morning glow - the beacon-boy in me broke big - so fun to compare n' contrast the two big fuckers - beacon crowded in by the gorge, devil's all alone - beacon basalt, devil's a golden granite - beacon all finger cracks, devil's a treasure-trove of gritty off-widths - both have the same shitty toilet-paper - both the same rangers, just devil's w/ them able to send you to gitmo if you get too outta hand the durrance route just left of center in the shade the route from the rather beautifully fully-paved trail, which is fucking handicap accessible, should you be so encumbered - also comes well covered in fluttering native memorabilia in the trees, like buddhist prayer-flags it was scorching hawt, but what can you do when it sits southwards and the afternoons awful likely to light you up? shit, if nothing else, we had the joint to ourselves, which, based on the internet-pix, appears to be a pleasingly rare situation me on the approach pitch - offwidth, like everything else - 5.4 i think? certainly the only 5.4 i can remember pulling on gear on not too many pix after - my performance on the durrance crack proper went mercifully unrecorded, yet i managed to thrutch-fuck meself up it on lead, the final off-width in particular bewildering me something fierce for the better part of five minutes mike got the cussin' crack, which aint' a crack at'tal, but instead a shortish n' wicked scary offwidth, w/ really no gawdman pro at all for the whole 40 feet of it... our boy was ready to quit at this point, but heat-stroke as i was, i wanted this one finished - i suck at enough other things in my life, dig? fortunately my next pitch was more mellow, and mike came back to life and climbed the final real pitch, a not-so scary chimney me enjoying the view halfway after hiding out in the shade behind a pillar for a spell we wandering out into the meadows and found the freaky fun 4th class pitch to the summit summit pano the summit was a sunbaked desert, devoid of truly spectacular views, so w/ diminishing water n' a wall of angry-gray water heading our way from the west w/ a fucking fierce intensity, we began the bail, which went smoothly - hit the parking lot just in time for the skies to cry w/ a wicked fury boozed it up n' had some supper not too far off, then returned to hyper-space n' rolled through the badlands w/ the disaffected air of autistic savants - made it to some godforsaken town w/ a weirdly river-boat themed cinder-block motel, watched some 80 year version of "hamlet" n' nattered n' eventually headed off to sleep w/ a freshly showered nutsack the next day we rattled off the next 5 some goddamn hours necessary to get us back to where we'd started in the winds the bugs were beyond control at the big sandy trailhead, regardless of wind or driving storm - i slumbered in the Ghost as the half-day tempest raged past - we finally emerged for some dinner n' a half-assed fire n' fucked-off to sleep next morning we shouldered six-tons of whiskey n' climbing gear n' shit n' rambled on to the cirque of the towers warbonnet n' wilson way up ahead the cirque coming into view, several skeetery n' sweaty hours later a storm broke on us as we hit the pass above the lake, so we said fuck'it to settling down lower in the cirque n' found a fine home for a few days under several huge boulders just below warbonnet - i put on my skeeter-proof setup n' set to pounding down the paltry liter of burgundy i'd brought along, savoring the views lovely views that evening, pingora, our main target, to the right - we had high hopes on the wolf's head just by it too, but fate would fucking see to it great beer n' a great location we got up good n' early that first day in the cirque, afeared of weather n' looking like wusses - high altitude for sure, both of us found ourselves short of breathe after little more than suiting up n' strapping on our shoes wandering off towards pingora the evening before it'd seemed mighty odd our beta hadn't given us beta to get us all the way up the rock, yet once we got near it made a mort more sense, it mostly just being walking n' easy scrambling to get up to the top of the south shoulder snacking n' taking in the soon to come climb loved it - 3 pitches of easy moderate climbing - shit, gotta get more peaks where you can get this kinda adventure for 3000 feet more by the time we hit the summit, though it wasn't even noon, the lightining was flying and i was sure we were gonna get kilt mike's uncle, who'd taught him to climb, had just died, so our boy brought a pic of him up and stashed him in the hills he loved... summit pano the wicked classic ridge of wolf's head, sure wish we'd had time for it... from that afternoon on it was storms aplenty - we huddled under our sweet boulder bivy n' binged n' purged not a bad place to shelter a storm having lost a day, and not feeling up to taking on the classic routes on either pingora or wolf's head, we headed to the east cracks of pingora took some heartache at first to figure out where the fuck to make our entry, but soon enough we finagled the right thing n' fumbled up the snow to start out - hard to hate on this kinda climbing - mostly clean cracks soaring up easyish slabs - here and there it got stupid, but i'm stupid in spades, so it weren't enough to stultify me there was hemming n' hawing to be certain, and the weather also threatened, but then we were on top and heading back down again mike celebrated w/ a shower that night saw the last of the whiskey n' the tobacco n' the food, so we settled on shuffling off the next morning - poured right aroudn the time we wanted to leave, but we tholed it boulder-side n' waited, finally casting off and rattling back the long length soon enough, we getting separated on the hateful level hard-reach of 6 miles to the trailhead, me getting more n' more heel-sore along the way bantered w/ hillbillies while waiting for mike to arrive, then we heaved off down the long gravel road to get to beer n' burgers took a long time to bend all that space back - music - beer - the rush of air - some bantering w/ a biker in a cool park pull-off in evening once back it was listlessness made human - lounging around n' drinking n' doubting my own existence geoff n' time-traveling'steve thankfully pulled me away and we had a day of sauntering around smith - an evening of rain n' retread conversation n' civilian-inspired bullshit - geoff heckled in the morning for illegal camping - we tried for the santiam highway ledges but our rope-gun got glum on what looked like a godawful gritty lead so we settled for birds in a rut instead - had a gutful of burgers in the terrebonne depot soon thereafter and sizzled off west towards the setting sun then it was just a few days before the fam was back and what was there to do? geoff said let's go to darrington goddammit, so me n' him n' his brudder kyle headed out oso, the scene of what awful-earth can contemplate, taking in geologic time exfoliation dome - the so-called "granite sidewalk" right of center - much more like a "granite log-flume" but whatever... jesus-fuck, what a walk up - thought i'd throw in the towel 10 minutes after we starting up the serious - were this yosemite, the whole fucking thing would be fixed high up into the sky very fun climbing, much more so than i thought of dreamer on my first visit - slab for sure, but plenty of cracks n' corners klye on the money pitch yeah, boi. looking down p3, the mighty granite log-flume in full majesty geoff after pulling the overhang on p3 geoff on the excellent p4 our boy coming up p5 looking back up the internimable slabs on the way down me n' geoff looking none-so-sure - turned out it was hella easier to walk down these fucking slabs than up - just hope to fucking hell you don't get rained on while you're up there an evening of raging camp fires n' good humor ensued, though i was soon out of both beer n' butts, bitter-dumb-bastard that i am - the next morning some old boys wandering by our camp, baloney-dome bound, including the irascible mark hanna, who seemed happy to make our acquaintance - must be nice to live just a hop, skip n' a jump from such a granite play-ground a storm-impurned morn that one was, but we sweated up to 3 black-cock rock n' had just enough time to do one route before we had to bound back down the drive back too hateful to contemplate - flat tires - fucking traffic - fading glory - fuck, we're all goners when it comes to it...

7/16 - day 11 - opening day + 1 - been a busy summer - sand dunes, redwoods, yosemite, san francisco, flat-irons, devils's tower, the winds, smith and darrington, then me washed up flat n' busted on my doorstep just a few days before the family rolls back in - road weary and woe-eyed - sometimes i think i'm a shadow and the sun's almost down a morning spent mending the damage done to tires on the most recent road-trip, then out to beacon and a lap up the corner w/ geoff n' bill - cool weather, cloudy - the old place looking just fine after all this time... musta spent at least 10 solid minutes trying to find the new party spot rumored to be an unladen-swallow's flight away, but eventually we figured ole'adam just must not be home

nothing like wandering about w/ yer favorite partner

the conquering tide by ian toll - listened to this one on cd, all 28 hours of it - sure made the long drive back from san franny and out to the wind river go by quickly - if you liked rick atkinson's liberation trilogy, you'd dig this one big time - the story of the american pacific experience from '42 to '44 - gripping depictions of naval battles as well as guadalcanal - well worth the read