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[TR] B-tons - Unnamed Aid Route(C1+)/Snap-Crackle-Pop!(A2) 2/21/2009


ivan

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Trip: B-tons - Unnamed Aid Route(C1+)/Snap-Crackle-Pop!(A2)

 

Date: 2/21/2009

 

Trip Report:

no pix, but here's your complimentary soundtrack, taken from the oft-repeated jamble going through my aid-frenzied brain 2day:

 

"wanna smash the faces of those beautiful boys

Those Christian boys

So you can made me cum?

it doesn't make you Jesus"

 

[video:youtube]

 

got a kitchen pass to chunk another brick in the road to the nose today - now why are all these fancy boy sport gym rats fucking up the old-skewl aid route at the slippery, slippery broughton hot-spot?!? damn near so that i can't make heads nor tails of the guide book - so chockfulla .11s n' above and hardly a breath of aid info that i gotta wonder why the hell i bought the damn thing? i mean, have i LOOKED at my gut in the mirror lately? damn lucky i can see my cock! :P

 

anyhow, miker n' i were looking for practicing aid-leading n' cleaning - dyslexic meeting at the park n' ride - wind n' cold at lewis n' clark at 0830 - 3rd cigarette of the morning...

 

my first walk over to the bat wall - guess i musta missed the beacon-wand somethign fierce to skip the high-life over at the far-side on so fine a day - certainly picked a fine final route to mimic the obscure lines i've come to prefer at the big b- eyes thick w/ scum now - memories of smithsonian relic pins and freaky creaking 1/4 inch bolts flexing and flaking under my 16 stone frame - the very real chance of a domino-chain of fucking failures - pop-pop-pop-fuuuuck!

 

we warmed up by each taking a turn leading the old "unnamed aid route" that became dracula - recognized the recent chop-job - laughed to see the doorknobs had put their first bolt at eye-ball level off the ground -wtf? the neo-dracula is still fun s an aid route (hey, look at me, i can aid 5.12!) - obviously you clip a bunch of bolts, but i found used several hooks, a thin aid nut, a yellow alien and a medium nut all plum necessary too - mike and i did the route in nearly the same time - if he took more it was only b/c he's a shrimpy-bastard and needed to use a few more pieces of gear, including a bird peak to make it go

 

the highlight was the neo-superstition, once snap-crackle-pop - the first part goes fast for the sport-monkeys who appeared out of the blue after noon - the obvious signs, like the flooding tide - first the dogs - then the cute chicks - then the inevitable brawny, unhelmeted baboon-bastards!

 

as an aid route, s'c'p starts fun - not wanting to free anything in my boots (lazy mofo) i found a birdbeak and some hooks n a blue alien required - once on the awkward ledge it gets much more serious - the old aid line is so far-removed from the start that if you skip the belay at the nice bolts there, which we did, you face a real chance of a ledge fall - the pins above are decades old - the first two are so levered out you need hero-loops - the 4 bolts are frightening spinners and really oughta be replaced - oddly, for a fixed aid line, the bolts end leaving you needing pins to finish (and at this point, 20 feet back from where you started, hanging and twisting like hell) - i needed 2 knife-blades and a funky-ass relic soft-euro-sorta-lost arrow i bootied from pipedreams this summer - the last pin required extensive cleanign before i coudl place it - i wouldn't be suprised if it had been a decade or more since the last time someone wandered up this way - it was a wierd time - bolt clipping hardman coasting up the .12s n' .13 on either side of me while i replayed a little piece of the ancient and neglected past - hanging like a phat worm impaled on a hook - the last pin was only a 1/3 in and on a horizontal ledge w/ a sling fitted as far down as i could get it, but still it bent damn near in half when i weighted it, frantically excating moss and dirt out of a crack above to get a green camelot in - the last few feet to the anchor an ectasy of fear, riven w/ the awful realit of taking a screamer back down over the roof onto the blades and the creaking antiques :noway:

 

anway - good enough i reckon - just a cragging day but still fun - roaring winds up high, but nice n' calm and mostly warm at the base of the wall - the few short falls i took off hooks haunt my muscles - the sense of settling in a shower of sparks - time for another drink? ;)

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nice job getting out and finding some old-school adventure ivan. you never cease to amaze me with your go-get-it attitude. i guess now that beacon is closed you'll have to look hard for said adventure. both dracula and superstition ( first pitch ) have been led sans bolts which adds some excitement to a mostly bolted wall. maybe you'll try that next time you're out? :) i'll post pics later.

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discovered the beauty of the grigri y-day too (just bought my first one, but in retrospect i'm cursing meself from not just swiping one from my gym, which has 5 that never are in use) - you can read a book while belaying! :) fun enough when you're on the passive end, but there was something unnerving about looking down at the top of the roof, nerves ajangle, to see my belayer totally oblvious, nose in a novel :P i recall pulling a trick i learned from layton - pulled out my smokes, mid-pitch, had a puff and took in the scenery :grin:

 

would like to see those pix mark - i did indeed notice the many instances of crack-bolting on the bat wall - would be ballsy indeed skipping all the bolts though!

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how can you not like tori amos you vile bottomfeeder? she's right up your angst-filled black-hearted little alley - a veritable singing shelob - her version of "smells like teen spirit" put cobain to shame!

 

looking forward to seeing how your metallurgic prowess puts form to function, padre :) perhaps we can even drag you do to cali w/ us? mike was vexed w/ me as i wouldn't let him take the cheat stick after i did the route first w/o it :)

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  • 1 month later...

miker was off to repeat my solo of the monkey and spend the night in the west cave, so w/ just sunday to play i returned to broughtons, this time alone, to see what mischeif i could find

 

started by repeating the unknown aid route (aka dracula) and all was well till i decided to alter the difficulty for future free climbing monkeys when my fishhook blew out the little fingerpocket above the last bolt on the ramp traverse - i was just moving to clip the bolt above - the last time i had first placed a green alien of right, then done the hook, but figured to skip the gear this time and just do it right - guess i've gotten fatter in the interim? - anyway, so i ended up falling a long way, spontanouesly hollering "jeeeeeeeeeeebus" as isaac newton stuck his physical cock up my ass - i was 15 feet or so below the bolt that stopped my fall, hanging in space - i jugged back up the line, and then everything went :( clown

 

though i'd been mindful of not leaving the jug to close to the draw in the bolt, when i transferred my wait unto my etrier on the bolt, the removal of my bodyweight from the line rocketted the jug into the gate of the biner, jamming home such that for the next 15 minutes, no matter what jackass machinations i made, i couldn't free it - james taylor came through my headphones talking 'bout carolina and shit, and then i knew i was gay, the dreams couldn't be avoided any longer :)

 

so the only solution i could figure was to use bit of the line running down to the ground to fix to the bolt seperatly, lower down to the ground, find a knife (my therapist took mine away from me) and saws through the draw which had the biner my jug was jammed in - tasty!

 

luckily a tokugawa-era samuri fawker was hanging out at the red wall w/ a goddamn loaner-kitana - i most gingerly sawed through the draw which i'd bootied somewhere in the past few weeks and had no sentimental attachment to - worked like a charm, as it bought me enough slack so i could disengage the jug

 

lowered down again to return the blade, then returned and finished the climb, but by now the sun was out like a furnace, so i flagged, not enjoying the hook move at the top required to gain the anchor

 

back on the ground, decided to seek shade - climbed peach cling on the north face wall, reaching the summit via the last little bit of gandalfs - didn't enjoy the smoke at the top so much, given that i had been nursing a quarter liter of water for the past 2 hours, but still, it feels extra cool reachign the top of something all by your lonesome - it made "fire and rain" make me not feel too queer :)

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Fire and Rain rules! could you not have reversed your moves and reweighed the jug?

i did just that of course but it was too late - the rope was as tight as could be and i couldn't move the jug down at all with all of my wieght, not that it'd matter, since i'd have to unweight the jug to disattach it from the line - basically, i shoulda just removed the jug from the line before i move onto my etriers on the bolt

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I did some unnamed aid routes too. However, they did have free climb names. One was Classic Crack and the other Sheer Stress. Also rope soloed CC, sorta, and climbed Sheer Energy, sorta. I'm weak.

 

Best part though was watching a strong dude from Stone Works cruise up the Red Wall with ease. Free soloed up past the anchor for CC on Thai Stick maybe and then up Kasmir.

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nice geoff - y-day was the first time aid-soloing climbs w/ substantial bits of easy free climbing and i thought it went pretty well - the constant cock-blocking of having to stop and awkwardly try to feed rope one-handedly through the gri has not yet failed to piss me off though :)

 

sheer stress rocks!

 

i like to hear from the free climbers on dracula if my unintended alteration has in fact upped the grade :)

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