ivan

maybe i'll avoid epic'ing on saturday night again and actually get to see the slideshow?

hoping like hell that this wicked head/chest cold gets gone by tuesday so i don't have to start the year teaching w/o a voice hoping to climb pipedream or some-other similiar silly line at beacon on monday

i took 40$ and shiny beads n' firewater for trading w/ any redmen we might've passed along the way...

the ne butt is an order of magnitude cooler and comes w/ the sweetest bivy i've yet had in the n cascades (just above the "5.4" (ha!) chimney)

maybe i'll even be able to show early enough this year to compete?

you missed out by skipping hte granite staircase - truly a very cool formation! was that orange plastic tiger still up at the summit?

man, sounds like the brown bears are comign out in force these days 'round cascade pass! ne butt of j'berg in the dark sounds wicked fun

at least the homo huddle won't feel quite so homo for them wierd story - these ones always piss me off b/c they so rarely seem to have sensible explanations in the end

monday

the french finally decided to guillotine robespierre after he appeared on a giant paper-mache mountain as a greek god of reason

tina turner why the fuck not?

i don't have ball-nutz - off the start you have a pin practically at the same level as the anchor, then a sketchy 00 placement, a quick free move to okay feet, then 2 aid-nuts to a good pin - from there it's just plain wacky for 15-20 feet - i can't imagine free-climbing it, even though there's some stemming to be had, b/c the pro is so marginal - i haven't used ball nuts much but the one's i've seen don't look like they'd have fit - it feels very contrived NOT to step over into the sweet handcrack on bears in heat for that 20 foot section where the dutchman stays dangerously thin when you can be sinking gold and blue camelots, no?

the ptarmigan's a "hiking route?" the article says they lost their other gear a tuantaun could be a key piece of rescue equipment

Trip: Beacon Rawk - Da Fly'n Dutchman Date: 8/27/2008 Trip Report: the third times the charm - went up the 1st pitch for the first time last fall w/ oleg, who led the first pitch off the couch and fell repeatedly at the crux - i didn't have the gear or the stones for the upper pitch then and bailed after french-fuck'n'up the first 10 feet of it went back later in the fall and led the variant first pitch (psychic wounds?), but despite having more gear, i still didn't have etriers, which it became clear i was gonna need today, i returned to the scene of the crime - mike led the first pitch, but as it was rather damp and slimey, he aided most of it - i shot up it and cleaned it, then took a bit short of 2 hours to aid the money-pitch, which is stupid thin for a stupid long time - how the hell doesn't it have more pins bashed in? at any rate, bailed over into bears in heat for a 10 foot section when i got tired of trusting my precious ballz to aid-nut after aid-nut - brought a leper but couldn't get a placement - the last half is tremendous fun and not nearly as sketch - ended up directly aiding about 90% of the pitch i reckon - sigh - maybe i'll reincarnate as a worthy free-climber? Gear Notes: aid nutz double set of nuts, small through large 3 blue to red aliens 00 metolious 1 .75 2 #1,#2 1 #3 (if you stray over to bearz-n-heat etriers (if you suck) Approach Notes: look out for the rangers, who have decided to Bring The Heat down to the base of the wall for god-know's-how-long now

had you left beer in the car?

cool - and it don't seem like the bonezone's as likely to get cluster-fucked what w/ the much larger emphasis on trad - the parking is way more sketchy there though, eh?

isn't the disturbing thing about coulior's current avatar pic that it could actually be a dude?

they only got to hunt once. they've been tied up in the courts since then You mean after they used a M2 .50 cal machine gun to tear the whale in half; "just like their ancestors did?" i'm sure their ancestors would have used the same gun, were it available wow, this is almost a meaningful conversation!

you climbing monday? most of the stuff i like at beacon ends up being part aid/part free

nice - belongs in alpine lakes forum though

naw, i meant it for bill

this in the vicinity of headwall or some other undisclosed location?

1. well, it's not alcohol sales, b/c that's the drug we legalized - i'm sure anhauser busch and phillip morris would love to taek al qaida's rice bowl from them, and they'd have my loyal support i'm sure 2. it would seem ironic that, to protect the freedoms of the non-americans your checkpoints are designed to save, you'd shit on the freedoms of americans already here 3. were you shot at by a terrorist in this country? or are you playing the part of the redcoats of 1778, bitterly complaining about the "terrorists" who shot at them while forcibly occupying the terrorists' own land?

i want my drugs to be traffiked i could give a shit about immigrants (though, i suppose by turnign our nation into a police state, that might make'em want to save themselves the trouble of traveling and they can stay in their own) are you really that afraid of terrorists? i remember passing through the real checkpoint charlie when i was in the scouts in 5th grade - on the way back through, the east german guards noted how we'd left a 10 year old behind at the brandenburg gate

just fyi, i doubt they're planning on fixing the suiattle to the downey creek trailhead anytime this decade, given how long it's been out of commision *however* it is possible to DRIVE to the downey creek trailhead still if you have a little gumption - joshk and i got his audi all-roader up there, and we saw a guy who got a vw thing up there too - the first washout at mp 12 ain't bad at all, and the big one at mp 13, while wild, isn't unreasonable, especially if you're in a fairly narrow car and the track ain't muddy suprisingly, the downey creek trail is in fantastic shape w/ a lot of new raised log-trails through the swampy parts - bachelor is a bitch of course, but not a show-stopper - if you can make it to the avy'ed out section, you'll be fine from there. joshk and i, smoking a full pack of cig's, getting a late start, and generally enjoying the pimp'n'lifestyle made it to the avy debris in a mellow day - you could be on top of dome easily on day 2