[TR] Beacon Rawk - - Pimpfest onna Portaledge (Getting Ground Zeroed) 7/29/2008

[ivan]

Trip: Beacon Rawk - - Pimpfest onna Portaledge (Getting Ground Zeroed)

 

Date: 7/29/2008

 

Trip Report:

you must forgive the ecstatic jabbering that follows, especially given that we fucked up and failed to bring a proper camera to capture the magic, a fault i shall seek to mitigate w/ the copious use of many fine swearwords - a fine, fine local creep was just completed by your friend and humble narrator - being a creature of the north cascades i've never sampled the great walls of the golden fruity-cali-booy south, but curious i've been to see what that whole scene was like - lately my friend miker had come by a pimped out double portaledge and was looking for someplace to make mischief w/ it - years ago i remember tooling along w/ joeH on his anchor swapping shindig and rapping down through ground zero - he pointed out the sweet setup for practicing the big wall hanging bivy as there is an excellent 4 bolts anchor about 160 feet off the ground

 

so the plan went into action - mike's set to have his second gimp-child born tomorow or soon, soon thereafter, so equipped w/ a new cell phone (see our sordid stuart debacle for the backstory), he and i zoomed outta camas aroudn 4 y-day and were on the scene and ready to roll about 530 - we circumvented the parks newfangled fuckall scheme to charge 10$ for overnighting on the rock by parking 50 yards down the road in the old-school misanthrope p-lot - humped our ledge and a huge party supply down to the south side and set to work

 

the start to ground zero is damned confusing if you're just reading the prg and i dont' know that i can do much to improve on it other than to say that, after commiting a great hate-crime against the myriad of luscious ferns, trees, shrubs and purty, purty flowers that were encamped in the 300 some odd feet of cracks for likely the past 2 years or more, the line is much more obvious now when standing at the base then it was previously- the bluebook line on the route reads .11d, grade III, which i reckon is right on - i regretably am damn far from having that in my free-dar, but armed w/ many small wires and a pair of etriers and a daring do to free what i could and aid-fuck the rest, i managed both pitches in the fine style all who have had the misfortune to meet me have come to expect

 

the first pitch is the blue-collar fright-fest - crazy lichen-ated, thiiiiiiin cracks w/ only a few thousand year pins along the way, unstrait-forward route finding, blah, blah, blah, 2 hours later i was at the sweet hanging belay and attempting to transform the image of the pig-hauling setup so androgously illustrated in FOTH into reality but without the high-speed jumars that the jet-set crowd is all equipped with - using a pulley and 2 prusiks and my etriers i was able to figure out how to hoist the 60 some odd pound pig up to my perch -being a phat-ass phuck has its advantages - i can see how doing a true big wall expedition would be epic to the extreme

 

after mike arrived at our lofty crib, we deployed our wonder of aluminium science and set into the 120 ozs of whiskey and fosters ("it's australian for budweiser!") and other assorted party-favorites we dragged along and quickly became rudely deranged whilst sorting out our strange situation - ropes everywhere - gear everywhere - biner on biner on biner! brought a z-rest for some obscure reason and had zero use for it - the 'ledge was the coziest bivy i've had all summer

 

scenes of the night - shooting stars - satellites - boats on the river - the sperm-spluge of the milky way - a wailing set of mp3 speakers blaring out the tunes that meter my mercurial soul - "navigator, navigator, awake and be strong - the mornign is here and there's work to be done!" - "she's addicted to nicotein patches, she's afraid of a light in the dark" - "by landslide and rockblast they were buried so deep, that in death if not life they'll have peace when they sleep" - arcing lines of piss cascading down the rock - spotlights - like climbing into a sedate aviary - swallows all aroudn swooping and swirling, bug-bound and playful - bats - owls - moths - camel after camel after camel and then the whiskey's gone!

 

light at 430 - the crescent moon glows in the east - mike is forced to rap to the ground and settle a certain gastro-intestinal necessity while i unfuck the ropes and sort gear - i try to hide my glee at getting to lead the money, money pitch - goddam, how did this only get 1 fucking olson star? - in the state it was in, covering in powder-green lichen and completly vegetable infested my puny man-boy free skills kept me from freeing more than maybe 10% of the pitch - steeeeep! i was the proverbial pimp on xmas morning, unwrapping a present every 3 feet, covering my eyes w/ my elbows while tearing out whole ecosystems of ferns and other fragile things - found an acorn lodged in a crack, awaiting the Great Leveling - "thanks santa, just what i wanted, a nut placement!"

 

and then of course the song that just wouldn't go away, the one i belted out endlessly like some loon - starstruck - "i wanna be a rawkstar!"

RBH3TFCKVok

"'cuz we all just wanna be big rockstars, live in l.a. mansions, driving 15 cars, the girls come easy and the drugs come cheap, we'll all stay skinny 'cuz we just won't eat!"

 

mike's wife was all set to get her bun out of the oven by watchign some fancy chic-flic at noon 2day, and so we had to high-tail it outta there w/o climbing riverside like i woulda liked, but no worries as the rain began very shortly after we broke down the ledge and rapped down - a big hearty "fuck you" to the jackasses who brought the meth-addled pitbull to the base of the crag and left him to growl and bark and chase us down the trail - luckily i had a portledge in hand to plunge into his skull had he come 4 feet closer to my happy bubble -totally harshed on my buzz - do you fucknuts who bring your dogs to the crag understand that mean assholes like me will kill them? yeah, so your puppy might be real sweet when you're around, but when you leave them to blockade the sole exit from the crag, freaked out at the rockfall and isolation, you create a situation where something is gonna get hurt, and it sure ain't gonna be me - if i had had a gun, little fido would probably be dead now, and you too if you had pitched a fit over it - anyway, back to the light and frothy tale i'm laying down so subtle

 

hmm, fuck, well, that was that - all you so called portlandia hardmen now have had a neglected classic cleaned for you to go free and chest-beat over and its everybit as damned good as driving 6 hrs to go do CBR - the placements are all clean and the flowers all fucked - i'd be happy to belay you while you freelead it and i'll see what i can do on tr!

 

Gear Notes:

a set of tiny nuts

00 metolious cam a must

X2 blue, green and yellow aliens

X2 sets of small, medium and large nuts

X2 .5 to 2 inch cams

1 3 inch cam

16 or so draws

 

and for the pimped out portaledge experience you will need:

1 can of bbq pringles

2 giant subway gut-bomb sammies

1 sack of cheetos

X4 fosters oil cans

.5 liters of makers mark

1 pack of crumpled camels

a whole headful of to make the shooting stars seem more personal

 

Approach Notes:

park in the olde spot to escape the warden's ticket

[phillygoat]

You are the best thing about this site.

 

(sh*t- did I just say that out loud?)

[pink]

[ivan]

ah yes, and i forgot to pay all proper homage to the big bill coe, who according to legend and myth, was in on the fa w/ jimbo back in 1885 or something like that - you been back on this route since the reagan era, dude?

[billcoe]

Dude, I can't respond just yet the song is still rockin'

 

"Well we all just wanna be big rockstars

And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars

The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap

We'll all stay skinny 'cause we just won't eat"

 

I never appreciated that song till now. Damn you write well Ivan, real real well. Jimmy has a great story about me doing the first pitch (I think that's now called the first 3 pitches in the guidebook but a single rope will reach) I love to hear. He's got another phenomenal story about a new route we did Saturday at a more remote location too. He doesn't like the internet spray though, so I'll let you ask him to recount it. I've had some great adventures with him, I'm so grateful.

 

Come by Friday after work for a beer, burger and a movie. Mike too if he's not doing fatherhood duty.

 

So reading between the lines there, CBR? Did Beacon Ben free that route after you cleaned it? Stout!

 

Phillygoat! - dude, when you get here Friday, remember to pick up your Thighland climbing book. I bought a new one so I wouldn't stick your pages together, thanks for the loan too. Wife is making me go. Says I need to get out of the house, and insists I need to climb at Chang Mai to.

 

Dude, you are a f*ing inspiration. I'll loan you a weapon next time you head out as long as you don't get too crazy.....oh wait, small chance of staying in control! Nevermind!

 

What a classic tale. Did you read Wills story of Steck-Salethe? Holy crap dude, you got competition in the tales of woe and depravity category sir! You 2 nuts should do some climbing together. The write ups and the climbs would be insanely sick I'd bet.

[ivan]

would love to come by friday bill but gotta go to colorado thursday and not climb for a whole week

 

naw, ben didn't tag along 2day, but on sunday we did local access/flighttime/flying swallow and i think he freed most of the latter after i led it, francophillicly

 

saw jim sunday afterwards (we also tr'ed fly'n'swallow direct, which i vote as -2 stars retarded) but as ben and i played tour guide for jeff thomas up jim's young warriors route, we ended up in a big gaggle (ben's bro and pink chalk also accretted in our max danger dalliance atop the rubble-pile) at the top of the se corner all jabbering and gibbering sick-spray at each other and someone managed to miss any tale of saturday

 

and now it's time for a walk w/ the kiddoes

[billcoe]

Bone (faint reference and homage to Kevbone) voyage sir.

 

When you return, check this one: Link to ws trip report.

[billcoe]

Ivan, I think it's damn funny you intentionally keep putting all the Beacon stuff in the "Oregon Cascades".

 

Toooo funny!

 

ps dudes, if you liked this story, read this: Giving stories like this legs

 

Maybe add what your thoughts on that are to the thread?

[ivan]

forgot me favorite line from navigator, the one which somehow made my whole bottle dissappear and the short nap commence

 

"they never drank water, but whiskey by pints

and the shanty towns rang w/ their songs and their fights!"

[miker]

It was a sweet ass experience except the rapping down in the morning to vent my gurgling bowels. I meant to traverse over to leave it on YW, but time was of an essence. I definitely got some jugging practice in though.

 

A stellar line, but it is thin thin thin as my little metolius power cams 0 and 00 got well used along with those thin wires I have never even used before. Ivan broke my gear's cherry...

 

Gotta admit the view and ambiance is nice over the river. Did the same thing on Index once and the fog over the city in the mroning was a little more ethereal, but overall, an excellent experience.

[JosephH]

Good going guys - glad to hear that anchor finally got a ledge on it as it's a sweet spot! All the column routes should see more traffic. Ground Zero got more or less cleaned out hard three years ago, but that was then. How about some more details on flightime as that's my next project relative to mid-anchor, good cleaning, etc.

[ivan]

what details do you need for flight time? the first pitch is basically a pin-ladder and is easy as an aid climb but crazy lichen-ated currently - the second pitch i haven't done but has a lot of shrubbery and just as much grungy-fungy - that second pitch looks very fun and i plan on going back w/ a pair of etriers sometime soon hopefully w/ ben - we'd probably replace the rusty-ass, american-death triangle laden anchor that currently exists below it's crux roof

[JosephH]

It was the second pitch I was interested in, thanks.

[ivan]

did a lap on GZ yday, this time sans partner

 

bizarro occurence - while setting up at the base suddenly some rockfall from above and a rope came down from the ground zero anchor up on grassy ledges - holy fuck, am i getting beat to the route, a route still overgrown from last year, one that last year got maybe a half-dozen ascents? turned out to be some dude mark who tr'ed it in style and even left me most of the flowers to pull from the cracks

 

heard someone free soloed blown out the other day, then downclimbed jills thrill

 

on p1 took a fall just a bit below the bolt in the rotten section - daisy fell onto the thin brassy a halfbody length below - guess it exceded 5 kilonewtons?

beautiful day - cold even, certainly for the last day of july - sounded like the scotch hordes of pdx were out weeping for william wallace down by the boatlaunch as krowds of kiltwearing types were plainly visible down there, and the continous hum of pipes n' drums made my ascent quite the merry scene

 

above the crux on p2 i reached down to clean my 00 metollius only to discover something drastic had happened to it - wtf? looks like the stopper on one of the lobs broke off? at any rate, it no longer answers - only bought the damn thing a couple months ago and its held no falls -wtf did i do to it? anyone had similiar problems w/ this unit? the 0 i've wailed on for years w/ no issues...

 

clouds of mozzies on the getwaway as always - old larry made for good compnay - next mission smooth dancer?

[kevbone]

This spray report sucks without pictures. I have to learn to read jabber before I can appriciate your reports.

[denalidave]

 

heard someone free soloed blown out the other day, then downclimbed jills thrill

Double that! :noway: Whom was this stone master with balls of steel?

[billcoe]

...turned out to be some dude mark who tr'ed it in style and even left me most of the flowers to pull from the cracks

Not Mark, Matt....Matt Spohn I think....

 

 

heard someone free soloed blown out the other day, then downclimbed jills thrill

He posts on Cascadeclimbers so he can step up and say himself, but like many of your better climbers, dude climbs more than he posts.

 

 

You been playing whack-a-mole with that thing? LOL! They should take it back, Metolius is good about that kind of thing.

[Wallstein]

above the crux on p2 i reached down to clean my 00 metollius only to discover something drastic had happened to it - wtf? looks like the stopper on one of the lobs broke off? at any rate, it no longer answers - only bought the damn thing a couple months ago and its held no falls -wtf did i do to it? anyone had similiar problems w/ this unit? the 0 i've wailed on for years w/ no issues...

 

 

I broke both of the cam stops off the exact same unit this spring. I took a short soft fall 75ft out when they broke. Suprised to say the least. I've had an older style 00 for close to 10 years that is still working great. Go figure.

[ivan]

They should take it back, Metolius is good about that kind of thing.

really? i was just chalking it up to being a fat ass and aiding on the thing - so should i deal w/ metolius directly or the outfit i bought it from?

[JosephH]

If REI take it back there, otherwise probably just call the guys at Metolius directly.

 

Cam Repairs and re-slinging

 

Please download the cam repair form and then call our customer service line at (541) 382-7585 to request a Return Authorization Number. Write the RA# on top of your form and on the outside of the box. Then ship it on to us at Metolius at the address above... and you're done.

[ivan]

thanx - wow, what can't teh intrewebs do?