ivan

forgot to mention, the best part of the day was saving the 60'some odd bucks i was planning on spending on a new blue alien when i found one some gumby had abandoned on cruising - 15 seconds and no nut tool landed a fine metollius cam in the same range! if the owner has a blue alien they'd like to swap out for this orange-spray-painted model i'd be fine to make the trade

Trip: Beacon Rawk - The Olde Goode Classic solos Date: 7/19/2008 Trip Report: no reason for posting this 'sides i'm drunk and captivated here at seaside w/ the grim glowing horizon outside the glass - feeling like some happy go lucky fucked up apostle w/ the house so quite and the drunks and children asleep - my morning y-day was glorious and everything that it is that words fail to communicate - out at the lot at 6 a.m. - was back home by 11, but in the scant space between did the classics alone - the corner, young warriors, cruising and the first pitch of dods - buzzards by the dozen, rising in frustration when the trains passed - half sun on the event horizon of cloudiness - if only the world could feel in those few hours the grandness i felt then, i can't imagine our globe's little troubles being so godawful - a slight breeze, the solid nubbins of young warriors top pitch, the bit where the feet let go and it's just hanging by your hands and cursing and hauling and whooping when its done - the smoke at the base of the last scramble - the tourons on the trail - the dew on the trees on the hike down to the base in rubber clogs - the sense that this all will be over very soon - i like that the slab pitch on the corner has changed - now a slight handjam adds to the reportoire of skills one can practice on route - finally, dods at the end of the day - jam after jam, and the whole thing up and back to the ground in 10 minutes! can't wait to be done w/ this beach trip in the orbit of the patriarchs

Trip: Mt Goode (,dude) - - The Olde Goode One Date: 7/13/2008 Trip Report: rare olde times w/ the honorable and odd joshk on the north fork of bridge creek in recent days zombie land tour to make it to the pct 15 miles - rumor-mongering and ruminating - binge and purging on tori amos - 30 degrees at the parking lot at 6 a.m. - drifting, drifting, drifting through darrington and the Big Beyond ah, trail! ah, more trail - why was i ever tempted to wade through unwacked hell-swamps? a bucholic beaten path over turbulent waters - no shortage of opportunities for the suicidial to scratch that itch along the way - bridge creek would be an awfully loud damn place to spend eternity though proceeding up the north fork - meadows of all the flowers i know - the ones that are queen anne's lace and the ones that aren't - mamloose (sp?) ridge leads toward goode all my partners are obsessed w/ fucking flowers bivouac on a great big boulder at 3800 feet - bear signs everywhere - a defensible position if only i could keep my eyes open - the parkland and alpine defenses of goode's ne buttress lie above us no sleep in days - the Big Poo grips poore josh - i sleep serenely while he spends hours in hell - black bears dance through my dreams and i know such lovely things day 2 - a black day for the pimp squad's californicated member - his bowels mend - heat, upon heat, upon heat as the sun glowers upon us - logan forsaken - resolution to put a camp at 5900 on goode instead - we set off to wade the creek at 3800 feet - an expensive lesson is learned - i am sworn to a terrible and humorous secret we ascend a snow finger to a creek that rises to the buttress soaring down from stormking - we hop a deadly moat onto rock - nervous memories and bad flashbacks of jo'burg turn to delight when we only have to do the vertical-'swack-boogie for a mere 5 minutes - we contour, sometimes playfully, sometimes petulantly, across snowfields - i do an alpine rendition of all along the watchtower before logan, who could clearly give a shit we pull into the motel 6 at 5900 feet - the hour passes that sweet stroke just a few minutes past 4 as we undertake a take-no-prisoners deforestation campaign in establishing newe pimpe towne - sitting on a rock, catching our breath, we grow oddly affixed on the summit-shadows of stormking on the glacier - days later, i will have to erase a half gig of pictures of all the same thing newe pimpe towne on the only flat piece of real estate in sight the whiskey-a-goode-goode hour, brought to you by your goode friends up in canadia and available at the reasonable rate of 5 bucks a hip-flask day 3 and the morning comes and we're off and traversing across the goode glacier just 500 feet or so to the buttress - the soft snow works well w/ josh's tennis shoes - did we mention why josh is in such a brazenly hare-brained bare setup? the actual toe of the buttress from the western side - beta said to go all the way around but they're welcome to a cold frosty glass of shut the fuck up as that's oh-so-more-contorted - a slight moat is easily turned to climbing at the actual base of the butt just below a steep snow finger a long, relatively disinteresting rock-fest begins - the easiest part of the whole experience for sure - heard some shit like skye skiied this shit over here? the cooler section... precise footwork is imperative on such highly technical 4th class pimpe-grounde fear n' loathing on the summit - jo'burger and buckner and forbidden and a hundred hard-on fantasies harken beyond do you have any hand-lotion, dude? meow the easiest part of the descent done w/, we enter into helle as we must traverse all the way back to the storm-king/goode col via steeeepe side-hilling - storm king looks fucking stupid from this side, but i dared not breathe such insolence until we'd finished having our way w/ his daughter into the rap down to the 'frigarator on the north side - my helmet says "FAH Q" - how about yours? josh just kept losing shit but getting stronger for it - here he shows off how totally chill he is w/ descending steep ass glacier sans gloves n' boots n' steel 'pons after 12 hours on the assault bivying on the north side then returning after the summit makes this mountain much more of the full meal deal - half-desperate w/ the coming of devil-dusk, forlorne at the prospects of finding a way across the tortous upper glacier, i spot our Last Best Hope - steping delicately over the Quick Good(e)bye i use my alumininium axe to hack in some footsteps and humpe me way over the barrier between here and my last 2 pall malls - i hoop and holler in the crepescular gloaming as josh yards on the rope to follow and in 5 minutes all the heart-ache is gone and its whiskey n' smokes n' lasagna n' the beatific-glow day 4 and 'fore noon we return to the north forke - the goodtimes gone lay out before us - we accessed the bivy via the snowfinger/creek on right, then up and left to the slanting snowfield below snow-king at top right - we bivied at the top of the buttress in the center of the picture and so now, we say so fondly to you home and hearth and hill, fuck off, we have other things to do

congrats - a virtual goddam orgasm of tr's lately!

not to far from what josh n' i were lovingly referring to mt benazir butto!

beastie boy's - "mark on the bus" from check your head tv36hODaolM

wise sir, do not grieve it is always better to avenge dear ones then indulge in mourning for every one of us living in this world means waiting for our end let he who can achieve glory before death when a warrior is gone that will be his best and only bulwark

i thought pissing contests like these just happened during the rainy months when we CAN'T climb at beacon?

ah yes, and for the record, the amazing hail-resistant, mostly wind/water proof, studded-for-his-n-her-pleasure, neo-colonial alpine cape w/ dyneema ass-floss cinch!

you wouldn't been able to handle it, mikey - dude, it got so wet after a while my cigs wouldn't stay lit!

let's see, that oughta match well w/ the orange alien already fixed to that pitch - and it's remorse it's stuck on, not os.

what ryhmes w/ the word "orange?" what is the averge air speed velocity of an unladen swallow? what have i got in my pocket?

didn't look much at the russell to notice anything other than that it looked most unsavory - the jp glacier is definitely the most pleasing route on the mountain, from what i've seen so far - i think slowshoes would be thoroughly pointless currently, w/ skiis being almost equally worthless. there is very little by the way of terrain that will be speed up w/ these heavy devices

how you getting there? even when we were there it didn't seem like skiis woulda been much help, until you actually reached the park. i know of one other group that went up about a week ago that said the snow still had not been refreezing at night, so i'd imagine a lot more melt out and funky conditions on the climb.

i was confident i'd be able to get up or down the route no matter what as i'd done it a # of times - we had bivy gear and cigarettes and a head-full of crazy - there was actually no storm-sign at the lake prior to us heading up around 1 or so, and the storm came from the south and east, where we couldn't see (and still couldnt' even as we left the snow)- furthermore, the huge t-storm that had rolled through the day earlier hadn't touched anything in the range despite the light show, plus that day was cooler and calmer then the preceeding one, so i felt it was a calculated risk finally, in an homage to my mother stone of beacon, i've gotten rather innured in the past year or two to climbing rock in shitty, shitty conditions

mike's been to the burgundy area b4 and done some stuff in california, but this was his first "real" trip - i thought dragging him across all the stuart traverse peaks would be a fine introduction and shit, at least you can see him in that pic - where's the money shot of him taking a hailstone to the nose?

quite the busy day 2day at the big b - folks climbing blownout, stephenwulf, bluebird and top-roping on excalibur and flying circus. blood sweat n' smears needs someone to go pull out all the new grass - i did my bit of 'wulf!

squamish = 6 hrs of driving + hairy eye-balls making judgements about the drugs i smoke

naw, i only run into him there on blue moons - usually he's off being a responsible worker/father - index, on the other hand, i've noted has a whole hoover-ville of bums n' freaks nearby

bill hicks, a much kewler american than the hater-in-question, had some great shit to say about helms... igvJ1Mew6Go

How? I have climbed at Index 5 times......Beacon is better. they're both great places, so who gives a shit about comparisions? beacon's a 30 minute drive, index takes damn near 4 hours. approach hikes for the upper wall at index are long and sweaty and uphill, beacon is a 5 minute walk DOWNhill. beacon has relatively more moderate climbs, index has more tasty pure aid-shit to do. both crags have great views. beacon has the cooler walk-off and no fucking rednecks throwing shit off the cliff top. but index has the best bouldering!

colchuck glacier?

frak'n awesome! my favorite part of the trip was watching the 8-or-so hours of mike's catatonic despair after returning to the stuart bivy i thought our training regime of running up dog mtn in the pouring rain while chain-smoking and pounding pbr's every 500 foot was excellent conditioning for what we encountered!

park service truck - entry log said they were from marblemount-me and going up to crystal lake

might be worth pointing out too that the route can be done sans axe and crampons now, though having a big shaft at all times does have it's rewards