billcoe

Holy smokes I can read that writing all day. Good stuff. BTW, even my sore muscles have sore muscles today:-) My take. Day one: Archery season for Elk opener is today, and like Larry Curley and Moe, we all but screw all of the quiet men with bows and cammo's season by bouncing up the road early AM past all the parked 4wd trucks in the clown car with branches scraping all sides of the car. By now any sensible elk is bedded down or in the next county. Short hike. Soon we are in the overhanging jugging. Ass handed to me (us all actually). Hands and arms turned into cramping claw like pincers that won't open but successfully stay fully pinched closed. Ivan showed great wisdom in pitching the thought of a direct rap line off so as to avoid the horrendous 40-50 foot traverse which follows the route. Need to get a refund on the shoulder surgery that didn't work. Between the craw hands and pain in the shoulder, even rap bolting the anchors was a bitch. Prided myself in getting all the rocks off in the way down (more on that day 2) so that no one gets killed by a loose block. Start and end the day with Ibuprophen. Takes the pain off enough that I'm all but passed out at 8:30pm when the sun goes down, leaving the boyz to carouse by themselves at the picnic table. Day 2, early to bed late to rise, but still the first up. Short hike up. Yesterdays excellent plan of the hound leading off seemed to not be happening so I jumped on it and easier jugging for less than 600' (starting up the hill) follows. Only hauling the drill and a couple ropes up leaves my fingers with strength and the claws don't return, but forgot the ibuprophen and the shoulder pain and 100 degree wall pretty much means I'm not lead bolting anything with a heavy power drill. In fact, just raising the right arm over the head at this time is difficult and painful. Ivan follows the jugging and finds a toaster/microwave that didn't get the memo that Bill was clearing ALL loose rocks off and off it goes to some loud crashing noizes. The hound - showing his wisdom, is nowhere near the base and he had lagged behind and wasn't even cued up to start, totally in the safe zone on the flat observation rock hundreds of feet away. Ivan charges through like Odysseus with a drill after a quick PBR quaff and a smoke to get his lead head on. Gets to the high point. Yesterdays pants filling (for belayers) end of day exclamation had been something like: "OMG, there's like a huge detached sheet up here" followed by ominous hollow tapping hammer sounds reverbing in the rock and the spoken word: "shit, no sane person is climbing up there" (followed by quiet manically and worried sounding to my ears laughter). This mornings version sans laughter changed to: "I'm heading up anyway and we'll see" is soon changed to "going left after 3 or 4 placements." Some serious Olympic caliber loose rock tossing happens with Homeric shotput style toasters successfully tossed and/or heaved. It soon proves that Ivan nailed the right direction when a couple hours later he's on cruise with the anchors in and the rope fixed. I jug up to see him off to the left @30 feet on a beautiful moss covered/loose rock looking narrow walkway/ledge system. He must have been tired today as I'm able to clip the traverse bolts near normal like with my shorter than normal reach if I just strain a little bit to reach the bolts far out there. Grabbing what appears to be a great handhold at the endish of the traverse to gain the ledge proves the illusions we labor under in life when it chooses to move towards me. No way it's getting tossed due to it's large size. Ivan of course points out that it's loose after I've moved it a few inches out. I push it back. Leaving the time bomb for sunnier days I'm soon up and ensconced in the well organized cluster that Ivan has well in hand. "We should have a solid 30 min left, if we can get up there we'd be certainly doing the Lords work" he's says. I look up. Maybe? hmmm. By now the shoulder is near excruciating but as the claws haven't yet returned I entertain the thought that a brief free climbing sojourn might get us the big ledge above. Think Thank God Ledge on Half Dome where everyone thinks they are going to bravely walk across it but invariably all wind up dropping down and either slithering or hand traversing, same here as I step on what appears to be a narrow flat ledge soon enough proves to be a soft fluffy moss hummock that is thinking that gravity and the ground is but a short flight away and in it's lexicon. Pondering how many loose rocks may be under said moss and the swinging fall that would most likely in quick succession have the rope dig into a hummock and then lift a hidden loose microwave block to boff my head as I'm swinging in space (it's steep here) if I pitched leaving Ivan holding that bag, I'm down on my knees in short order and crawling out there . No pride. Get to the end and the thing looks harder to free than I thought but Ivan encourages me to crawl back and grab the drill to put in a bolt. With even less pride I slither backwards, full on belly crawl that few snakes could duplicate, not even daring to be on my knees. All pride out the window. Thinking of life's irony's -in this case, "how did the best free climber of the group wind up sleeping on a rock at the base all day and the gimped up old guy gets handed this one. The thought of hanging on the gimp arm while trying to hold the drill in the slightly less gimpy one while standing on loose blacks leads to the thought that I'm not in any shape to free this pitch. No time for a bolt ladder, but I'd be inclined to not resort to that anyway if it could go free by a better man. Bolt goes in on tippytoes into a fantastic small patch of solid rock and then I can't reach to wrench it, but take a cleansing happy breath when I clip into it and make the move to get up and tighten it down. I look up and the pitch doesn't look quite so hard now. *cough* cough* Pride slightly returns when I'm able to walk upright like a man back to the belay with a fixed handline now in place, the moss still springy and giving but at least no loose blocks hidden underneath fly off. We head down with most of the full shit show. Leaving a few pieces for the next rematch and head home. I stagger into the house to a happy dawg and the wife who says: darn you're filthy, you had fun didn't ya?" Haha. Good times.

Did a lap with the pup today. Didn't find yer hammer TTSteve.

Family. Wuz hanging with them all weekend and missed the group effort of almost tagging the high point. Was grinding teeth thinking of you all. But the boat was running well, and would have missed this with my son (pulling pots), daughter, brother and Sadie May the elderly Terrier and trailer park floozy. In addition to being with a couple handfuls of other relatives I don't see much and my 93 year old mom who loves the coast but doesn't get out much these days. https://video-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-xlf1/v/t42.1790-2/11965038_10204837135276819_794597375_n.mp4?efg=eyJybHIiOjEzMzIsInJsYSI6MTMxN30%3D&rl=1332&vabr=740&oh=8d946249f6e99fc4e6f1989b67531a30&oe=55EEFCCA 15 crab, 40 clams, 2 bottles of bourbon. Oh, and the whales were doing National Geographic poses and migrating plentiful right below the Cape Lookout point after a 2 mile hike in excellent weather. Rematch with the beast next weekend.

I got to climb (follow Chad) up Superstitions first pitch out a Broughtons before my surgery (so while back). It had been a long while since I'd been on it (years*cough*) At first I was annoyed to see that the fixed pins had been replaced with bolts. However, it climbs better now. Pins pretty much go where they have to go, bolts can go in for the best stance), and I remembered that they were blades, not Bugaboos. So short pins and not something you'd want to take a serious fall on. Figured someone fell and ripped one or more, and that's what caused the bolts to go in. It wasn't my route (I think it was Mark Cartier and Jeff Thomas's) and I don't climb much at Broughtons so no one mentioned it to me. Whoever did the bolting did a good job with it, and after climbing it I thought the route was better. I'm not advocating for a change from pins to bolts, but I do think folks need to keep an open mind and decide on a case by case basis. When checking the pins at Beacon, if the pin placement is good it should be placed back. If it's not or it pulled out in a short fall on someone, put in a bolt if you have too. Should be a fairly rare thing to occur.

My thoughts prayers and heart goes out to you, Tom and the many that she touched. I'm glad she got the many years of life that she did but sorry to see a fantastic person check out too early. My best to you all.

Proving that if you toss enough free beer around and even the bloods and the crips or Stalin and Hitler would be homies! How was the show?

Looks fun John. Ujahn and I have been getting a Beacon lap on Wednesday's after work. As we both are getting old and fat, out of necessity, I'm afraid we'll be missing the gig tonight. Thank you for putting it up here. If it was raining I'd be swilling and watching for sure. -Bill

Good point. The first amendment is overrated anyway. Wait, what? Bob, what just happened there........??!!

Nope, not Bernie. His talk scares the powers that be and his policies will scare off the plentiful votes of middle America. That and he has integrity. A bad combo for the powers that be. Figure Biden will announce he's running, run and then win. He's smart, experienced and acceptable to lots of folks that Bernie will put off. For R's, could be anyone of the other 12-15 running, but it won't be Trump despite his big lead in the polls, I'd lay money on that. Sad to say it, but it's likely Bush as the R candidate. He's been quietly working on building the kind of machine that wins these elections. Both Bush and Kash (sic) have worked for Lehmen Bros, so they'd be acceptable to the 1 percenters.

I'll take it. Please email me your paypal address (billcoe@gmail.com) and I'll get the scratch up to you.

Sick? Art or porn? Meh, "climbing pron"? heh heh. From back when there was nobody there. Adam on the Right Cheek FA Which led to the first ascent of the Left Cheek being even more minimalist. No shoes no shirt no service...no chalkbag. At least, it might not be a chalkbag. Letting one's freak flag fly so to speak.

You might not be thanking me after my next post.

Nice to hear Micah!!!!! I still get out there too, but only when Beacon is closed or I'm in a total time crunch. It's a nice little hike and/and bouldering traverseand/or cleaning the loose shit off the lower parts combo-platter with the pup too when the day is too wet for Beacon. The name thing and sticking to it being called Farside is pretty much from Jim Opdycke as he was the one who found it. There's plenty of discourse about the name online from a lot of folks if anyone want's or needs to catch up on all of that (Jim is not on the computer so they'd have to call him for his view). I go with Farside out of respect towards Jim. I'd like to see others either do the same, or convince him to change his mind and get him to revert to "Dropzone". I like Dropzone as a name. And I like Ivans "Bonezone" wordsmithing effort even more that that. The man has the soul of a poet. It turns out that not only was it the Skamania country dump for many years, but until this day, the Washington Dept of Transportation (WDOT) is still using the old nearside trail to toss roadkill deer and other ruminants off the road. Of course, this attracts a regular cleanup crew of working cougars. Haha! Good times, especially in the fall when hunters will gut shot one: or there is a herd trying to run from a hunter and one or 2 gets pegged by a car. The deer tossing comes almost daily at that point. Sometimes the Wdot crew get an old stinky bloated one. It starts to fall apart when they grab it, so they slide it onto a tarp, then they toss the tarp it's on, along with their fucking rubber gloves, down the hill to let us deal with. There, I just outed them. It pisses me off to pick up others trash. Of course, the cougars do all the heavy lifting and it's just like Thanksgiving to them. Hard to complain about that. But that all explains Ivans choice of Bonezone and others choice of Dropzone as names. As far as an anchor goes, put it in if you have multiple folks who think it should be there. I climbed with Adam in Yosemite earlier this year, and noted that someone had bolted up his route we called "Adam's Crack". It was poorly bolted job too. Bolts put in so you had to clip them after you made the move etc. Anyway, Adam was sad about it, but what can a mother do? Do what you and others think is right, ask around first of course:-) Adam tried to put it up as pure as possible. No shoes, no chalk, no bolts, no clothes. Yeah. Not even a harness for one of those damned routes. Bowline on a coil -rope wrapped around his waist. ...Of course he took his nuts.... Wait. No he did. Climbed it close to buck ass naked he did. There was snow on the ground and I had my best Feathered Friends down coat on to belay. Thus the name of the Buttress: the "Bare BUTTress". And of the 2 other climbs that are on either side of Adam's Crack. The Left Cheek, and the Right Cheek, pretty much the same deal. Naked! Suppose to let your freak flag fly when you climb those. Unless you are old. Wife said to me (and we use to do the nude beach thing back when): "don't you peel it off, no one wants to see an old flabby pasty white dude." That lone sounded bad enough that I stayed clothed. LOL!!! Anyway, if you know who changed my text from Farside to Dropzone on Mountainproject, maybe touch base with them. It would be nice if they changed it back. Kind of like Bacher would feel (if he was still alive) and if someone were to go retro-bolt up the Bacher-Yerian. Not the end of the world but it would be nice if Jims voice was heard on it first. Take care all!

I only used the name Farside when I wrote that up. Strange that someone would replace every word "Farside" with "Dropzone" in my text. That seems somewhat disingenuous. Did they not see the Copyright symbol?

Gene answered it for me. I already made $100 on a similar bet on Hillary when an unknown upstart that neither the other bettee nor I had heard of at the time named Barack Obama step into the ring crushed her. As far as the loyal opposition goes, there are @ 15 solid candidates at this time and I will refer you to a few years ago when Pat Buchanan was crushing it pre-Iowa. Pat who?

I'll tie in anytime with you Timtravelr!!!

I believe that the A team is heading up today ... .....to evaluate and either slam a new pin or re-put (I made that word up) the old one back in. All you backsliders can finally relax with all of the internet wailing and the nashing of the teeth:-).

Gud luck with the neck surgery Dennis. BTW, I recently found one of your old nuts in the basement (Wild Country wired stopped stamped DH) that I'd bought off you from the last time you sold off your rack. That must have been @ 30 years ago. I was gonna give it to you and see if you remembered. Anyhow, good luck with it all!

Thanks Oly! Much better summer than last year stuck in the arm immobilizer thingy. Hope yours is well as well. Is that proper english? Anyhow, good tidings to you and yours man.

Wow -so sad, condolences to her loved ones.

Ivan is right Steve, you guys would dig it. The rock is killer solid. Route is easy. Crap, Plaidman drug me out to a pile of mud Tower by Crooked River earlier this year you could almost kick steps in, he'd be so happy with this. Couple close ups of the 4th pitch. As a belayer, I got real concerned here. Ivan goes around the corner and disappeared from view. You can see a fully detached block FROM THE GROUND! that I knew would be there someplace, and was fearful Ivan would get on it without recognizing what it was from up close. Ujahn and I have both had that happen to us at differing times elsewhere. The rope was inching up but I couldn't see Ivan althoguh I could hear him muttering about loose rock. I yelled up 3 times "YOU'RE NOT ON THAT BLOCK ARE YOU". He was off of it by @ 3 feet. Rock close up. Below: The roof system visible zoomed in. That's Geoff and Kyle up there and it's their high point for the day. Geoff is dark clothing higher, Kyle near invisible at the belay in the lighter colors. We're taking the day off and lollygagging ...getting some photos. Just to the right of the belay is that monster unattached block you can see in P1 right over Ivans head. I was musing to Ivan, how much do you think that weights? I'm sure it would be in the tons, and there is no apparent way that is help up there other than friction. It would be the trundle of the century:-) Same photo as above not cropped. Here's the overview of Tower Rock from the Tower Rock RV campground. Say hi to Peter and Pam who run the place, good folks. Pretty cool thing, while we were there, a goodly chunk of the Nisqually tribe was there. Doing day trips Huckleberry picking and fishing. For part of the day they were picking right where the short easy trail goes to the top of the Tower. They'd seen my red shirt up on the wall from below so when the red shirt guy came back, instant recognition and they wanted to talk climbing. Good folks. The roof is visible in the pic not far above the tree branches. Gotta go. My boys is in town and just woke up. We're off to Beacon for the day. C YA

LOL. Hola George!!!! I'll call you later. Here's my thoughts on things like this. Having been talked out of putting a bolt in a spot where I thought it needed one (still think that way) by George on a FA elsewhere just this spring, and having seen G singlehandedly put up the longest route at Jimmies (respect), I know George isn't the type to wantonly bolt. If he said it needed a bolt, I'd pretty much believe it. However, that said, I haven't been on Dutchman for years. In fact, although I thought my shoulder would be healed enough by now that I could be on the steeper routes like that and my fav, Blownout, again - it ain't happening. So I don't think I have a say in the discourse. Until I can get on it and cleanly lead it with nuts, it's not my place to decide. If it was further afield with bad cell coverage and scant climbers like Chimney or Jimmies, I'd be "go for it". But this is Beacon. I'd want to hear what the regulars who can get up a route like that say after they hop on it. I'm not anti-bolt enough to want someone to auger into the dirt and die before a bolt got put in, but it's worth looking at, talking over and maybe (I said maybe) just slamming in a new pin before that happened. Timetraveler, did you rap off after climbing Jills or the Corner or did you climb it? Or has anyone else done The Flying Dutchman this year and can weight in with their thoughts? ps, thought a bolt picture might be appropo. Ivan on Tower Rock P4 couple weeks back traversing left under the roof. Check that loose block out above him. Don't think I even noticed that when we were there.

Whoh, that "Of Mice and Men" shot pretty much shut down the discourse Pink. Reminds me of when the dog had to wipe with sandpaper. Know what he said? "Ruff"

Man, given the size of your hammer George, I don't doubt you'll set those suckers and they'll stay set this time! BTW, I have some replacements I'll donate if those have rusted out.

Heres one (it's summer and all): [video:youtube]