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kevbone

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5/7/18 - helped put a tad of that lad affectionately known as krazy-ken'z mortal remains into the ground today out at the beacon-wand - beautiful day, a bit breezy but cloudy and warm -  a crowd of kith and kin by the dock - jim n' sal n' me n' for a bit dave representing the beatard community our fallen brother came from - beers and bullshiting by the rushing waters, the dock all drowned - good times n' guffawing - ken had an ample crew, and i doubt my passing will be equally celebrated - a brief walk and then a big crowd of us were crawling up the trail - those of us who were able spread ashes in the duck blind, then atop the top of the se corner - grey my hands and such is that which is left behind when the person is gone - giddy w/ drink n' good feelings we gamboled on up to the summit and then back down - may all of us meet such a marvelous end, measured in abundance by family and friend :)

wise sir do not grieve

it is always better to avenge dear ones

than to 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

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Ivan, I can not begin to thank you enough for taking some of Ken to be in one if his beloved climbing spots for all eternity!  So sorry I  didn't get to hear your beautiful words prior to setting him free...perhaps I  can send a bit more of Ken to another favorite spot of his and we can get a recording then.   Scott and Craig said it was so beautiful it brought tears to their eyes! It was a beautiful day and I have no doubt that Ken felt the love from all...I  know the kids and I sure did!  <3. If you ever want to give me a heads up when you may be heading to Index, Smith Rocks or Yosemite,  maybe I could impose on you again?  My email is gszumwalt@gmail.com or phone (360)907-9874. Thank you to all the climbers that joined us yesterday, and to all that may take a moment to think of Ken when they are passing over him on the rock from here on out...

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was very happy to and hope i can get something half as nice when my time comes :)

will let you know anytime i'm bound for one of those places - been too long since i've been in yosemite and it'd be good to have an extra reason to return...

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Thank you, Ivan! Just think Ken would be far more apprecitive of being placed up on the rock he loved rather than on the ground, which is about as high as I go! Be looking forward to hearing from you anytime...I live in Hazel Dell so easy enough for us to meet up whenever you say...the kids and I may even want to hike along, if possible, perhaps! 

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  • 2 months later...

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

 

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On 7/21/2018 at 1:38 PM, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

 

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.

7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

Edited by ivan
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You can actually do YW without a headlamp in the full moon. The trick is to wait until the moon is up a bit so it lights up the first pitch.

I didn't discover that until one night I came to climb it (with a headlamp) about a decade ago. The parking lot was deserted except for another car at the other end of the lot and before I could even get out of the car the couple in the other car totally erupted into a fight. The gal eventually ran over to my car and asked to use my cell. She immediately dialed 911 and gave it back to me as the boyfriend was headed our way. They tangled some more and just as I stepped out to intervene the state police and sheriff showed up as both were right nearby talking as it turned out.  Next thing you know they're detaining me as a witness and after they get through with the other two, like 45 minutes later, they finally took my statement and gave me my leave. 

At that point, it was what I considered late and I at first thought about blowing it off, but instead, for whatever reason, I geared up and headed down the trail without my headlamp on as the moon was high enough to give just enough light to navigate by. When I get down to the base of YW my eyes had adjusted and compared to the trail down it seemed like daylight with the moon lighting up the first pitch where if I'd gone when I intended the first pitch would be in shadow still.

So I start climbing with the headlamp in my rope solo pack and never felt the need for it the rest of the night. In fact, the moon followed me around such that by the time I was walking down the trail the west face was then lit up. It's been one of my favorite things to do out there and I've done I've done it a couple of times a year ever since and would love to now but am currently not ambulatory.

Edited by JosephH
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never a dull moment at beacon :)

my fav headlampless ascent happened after a bit of a quarrel w/ the wife n' figured it was best if i just wandered away  - coasted out to beacon and arrived a tad before sunset - took a nap in the car and was awoken by the random passage of geoff and his buddy on their own midnight climb - brought a light too but wasn't needed at all and we partied our asses off up the shaded stone

sounds like you need to drink some green tea n' do some jumping jacks :)

Edited by ivan
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On 7/25/2018 at 11:36 PM, ivan said:

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.

7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

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On 7/27/2018 at 10:25 PM, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

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On 7/29/2018 at 4:14 PM, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

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23 hours ago, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

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On 8/1/2018 at 6:58 PM, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

8/2 - day 12 - kyle n' i went for a look see on something new that turned out not new at all - salvaged a corner crawl - homo gummi bears on the summit - topher n' company starting up stone soup - kevbone in the lot gearing up but i had to eschew conversation to roar back west for a salary bargain sesh that went straight to shit in short order...

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On 8/2/2018 at 10:57 PM, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

 

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

8/2 - day 12 - kyle n' i went for a look see on something new that turned out not new at all - salvaged a corner crawl - homo gummi bears on the summit - topher n' company starting up stone soup - kevbone in the lot gearing up but i had to eschew conversation to roar back west for a salary bargain sesh that went straight to shit in short order...

8/3 - day 13 (4 days in a row) - rainy at dawn, our plans seemed doomed - the doctors office and more nasty and needless pain inflicted on your friend and humble narrator - kyle in the thick weather at the bk parking lot, his enthusiasm ironically undamped - we bend space n' crawl up to the beacon way to the uprising railing - cut some brush to investigate a possible line that might take you from the top of hidden treats to top of riverside's exit by the norseman's head - find an obscure and old hardman's route - many smc hangers with non-stainless bolts that are all now brown as shit, plus a big beefy nail - doesn't seem to have seen much traffic in the past 20-some-odd years - latter geoff rolls in and we head up right gull, where i'm rudely reminded i'm half the shit climber i once was

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On 8/4/2018 at 12:20 AM, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

8/2 - day 12 - kyle n' i went for a look see on something new that turned out not new at all - salvaged a corner crawl - homo gummi bears on the summit - topher n' company starting up stone soup - kevbone in the lot gearing up but i had to eschew conversation to roar back west for a salary bargain sesh that went straight to shit in short order...

8/3 - day 13 (4 days in a row) - rainy at dawn, our plans seemed doomed - the doctors office and more nasty and needless pain inflicted on your friend and humble narrator - kyle in the thick weather at the bk parking lot, his enthusiasm ironically undamped - we bend space n' crawl up to the beacon way to the uprising railing - cut some brush to investigate a possible line that might take you from the top of hidden treats to top of riverside's exit by the norseman's head - find an obscure and old hardman's route - many smc hangers with non-stainless bolts that are all now brown as shit, plus a big beefy nail - doesn't seem to have seen much traffic in the past 20-some-odd years - latter geoff rolls in and we head up right gull, where i'm rudely reminded i'm half the shit climber i once was

8/6 - day 14 - lap 8-9 - started w/ a doc yanking a nasty pus-infected strip of packing from my excised cyst - sad news, at least another week of not swimming for the dude, even as savage heat descends upon us, damn near clawing my eyes out to be stroking through the kewl... - beacon after some beers, two laps, both w/ shielas present, damn near paradise :)

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22 hours ago, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

8/2 - day 12 - kyle n' i went for a look see on something new that turned out not new at all - salvaged a corner crawl - homo gummi bears on the summit - topher n' company starting up stone soup - kevbone in the lot gearing up but i had to eschew conversation to roar back west for a salary bargain sesh that went straight to shit in short order...

8/3 - day 13 (4 days in a row) - rainy at dawn, our plans seemed doomed - the doctors office and more nasty and needless pain inflicted on your friend and humble narrator - kyle in the thick weather at the bk parking lot, his enthusiasm ironically undamped - we bend space n' crawl up to the beacon way to the uprising railing - cut some brush to investigate a possible line that might take you from the top of hidden treats to top of riverside's exit by the norseman's head - find an obscure and old hardman's route - many smc hangers with non-stainless bolts that are all now brown as shit, plus a big beefy nail - doesn't seem to have seen much traffic in the past 20-some-odd years - latter geoff rolls in and we head up right gull, where i'm rudely reminded i'm half the shit climber i once was

8/6 - day 14 - lap 8-9 - started w/ a doc yanking a nasty pus-infected strip of packing from my excised cyst - sad news, at least another week of not swimming for the dude, even as savage heat descends upon us, damn near clawing my eyes out to be stroking through the kewl... - beacon after some beers, two laps, both w/ shielas present, damn near paradise :)

8/7 - day 15 - lap 10 - a dentist visit left me w/ a numb face at the boat launch, wondering what the hell exactly i'm doing w/ my life but ready to take a punch - a tasteless beer in the shade of the pylon n' then it was to the business - not a soul on the face and a big shady breeze in near 90 degree temps - pouring sweat, i found redemption, if not my sense of smell - no time to linger, i made it to "infinity wars" w/ the family just moments after the credits :)

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On 8/7/2018 at 9:32 PM, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

8/2 - day 12 - kyle n' i went for a look see on something new that turned out not new at all - salvaged a corner crawl - homo gummi bears on the summit - topher n' company starting up stone soup - kevbone in the lot gearing up but i had to eschew conversation to roar back west for a salary bargain sesh that went straight to shit in short order...

8/3 - day 13 (4 days in a row) - rainy at dawn, our plans seemed doomed - the doctors office and more nasty and needless pain inflicted on your friend and humble narrator - kyle in the thick weather at the bk parking lot, his enthusiasm ironically undamped - we bend space n' crawl up to the beacon way to the uprising railing - cut some brush to investigate a possible line that might take you from the top of hidden treats to top of riverside's exit by the norseman's head - find an obscure and old hardman's route - many smc hangers with non-stainless bolts that are all now brown as shit, plus a big beefy nail - doesn't seem to have seen much traffic in the past 20-some-odd years - latter geoff rolls in and we head up right gull, where i'm rudely reminded i'm half the shit climber i once was

8/6 - day 14 - lap 8-9 - started w/ a doc yanking a nasty pus-infected strip of packing from my excised cyst - sad news, at least another week of not swimming for the dude, even as savage heat descends upon us, damn near clawing my eyes out to be stroking through the kewl... - beacon after some beers, two laps, both w/ shielas present, damn near paradise :)

8/7 - day 15 - lap 10 - a dentist visit left me w/ a numb face at the boat launch, wondering what the hell exactly i'm doing w/ my life but ready to take a punch - a tasteless beer in the shade of the pylon n' then it was to the business - not a soul on the face and a big shady breeze in near 90 degree temps - pouring sweat, i found redemption, if not my sense of smell - no time to linger, i made it to "infinity wars" w/ the family just moments after the credits :)

8/8 - day 16 - lap 11 -  union war planning  in the morning - teacher strikes on the march all throughout this state if The Bastards don't come to their senses soon - 98 degrees by afternoon and my back wound still unstitched i had no options but to return to church and pray that the water might readmit me soon - reached out to denali dave via the luminiferous aether on the long lunge out but the interwebs don't seem to work right and we got wildly different perceptions of the plan - spent a beer's worth of time waiting for his arrival on snag ledge before figuring out he'd run up the trail and was waiting on the summit - lit a fire under my ass to arrive up there, sodden w/ sweat, only to find him gone - lovely views up there though as the magic minute commenced and i cracked open a pbr and settled in when suddenly he appeared, making mystic motions and random runes atop the the tumult of thumb rock  - made a down-payment on the beer debt i've built up w/ our boy over the years and we sucked up the ambiance - 2 score of elk ambulating around in the emerald canal, living like lords of the earth - barges banging up the columbia as the coal trains chugged back the other direction - the smoke n haze of our smoldering earth setting everything in subtle shades of hate - sigh...the summer shall not last...

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156452971987777&set=a.111187697776.86437.761227776&type=3

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23 hours ago, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

8/2 - day 12 - kyle n' i went for a look see on something new that turned out not new at all - salvaged a corner crawl - homo gummi bears on the summit - topher n' company starting up stone soup - kevbone in the lot gearing up but i had to eschew conversation to roar back west for a salary bargain sesh that went straight to shit in short order...

8/3 - day 13 (4 days in a row) - rainy at dawn, our plans seemed doomed - the doctors office and more nasty and needless pain inflicted on your friend and humble narrator - kyle in the thick weather at the bk parking lot, his enthusiasm ironically undamped - we bend space n' crawl up to the beacon way to the uprising railing - cut some brush to investigate a possible line that might take you from the top of hidden treats to top of riverside's exit by the norseman's head - find an obscure and old hardman's route - many smc hangers with non-stainless bolts that are all now brown as shit, plus a big beefy nail - doesn't seem to have seen much traffic in the past 20-some-odd years - latter geoff rolls in and we head up right gull, where i'm rudely reminded i'm half the shit climber i once was

8/6 - day 14 - lap 8-9 - started w/ a doc yanking a nasty pus-infected strip of packing from my excised cyst - sad news, at least another week of not swimming for the dude, even as savage heat descends upon us, damn near clawing my eyes out to be stroking through the kewl... - beacon after some beers, two laps, both w/ shielas present, damn near paradise :)

8/7 - day 15 - lap 10 - a dentist visit left me w/ a numb face at the boat launch, wondering what the hell exactly i'm doing w/ my life but ready to take a punch - a tasteless beer in the shade of the pylon n' then it was to the business - not a soul on the face and a big shady breeze in near 90 degree temps - pouring sweat, i found redemption, if not my sense of smell - no time to linger, i made it to "infinity wars" w/ the family just moments after the credits :)

8/8 - day 16 - lap 11 -  union war planning  in the morning - teacher strikes on the march all throughout this state if The Bastards don't come to their senses soon - 98 degrees by afternoon and my back wound still unstitched i had no options but to return to church and pray that the water might readmit me soon - reached out to denali dave via the luminiferous aether on the long lunge out but the interwebs don't seem to work right and we got wildly different perceptions of the plan - spent a beer's worth of time waiting for his arrival on snag ledge before figuring out he'd run up the trail and was waiting on the summit - lit a fire under my ass to arrive up there, sodden w/ sweat, only to find him gone - lovely views up there though as the magic minute commenced and i cracked open a pbr and settled in when suddenly he appeared, making mystic motions and random runes atop the the tumult of thumb rock  - made a down-payment on the beer debt i've built up w/ our boy over the years and we sucked up the ambiance - 2 score of elk ambulating around in the emerald canal, living like lords of the earth - barges banging up the columbia as the coal trains chugged back the other direction - the smoke n haze of our smoldering earth setting everything in subtle shades of hate - sigh...the summer shall not last...

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156452971987777&set=a.111187697776.86437.761227776&type=3

8/9 - day 17 - lap 12 - no time for dilly-dallying w/ Serious Business impending, i raced up the scorching stone, soaked in sweat, then winged it back west to the district office to behold 200-some-odd of my pissed off union brothers and sisters sharpening their pitchforks and preparing torches to Storm the Barricades (between bouts of belting down hot dogs of course :)

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22 hours ago, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

8/2 - day 12 - kyle n' i went for a look see on something new that turned out not new at all - salvaged a corner crawl - homo gummi bears on the summit - topher n' company starting up stone soup - kevbone in the lot gearing up but i had to eschew conversation to roar back west for a salary bargain sesh that went straight to shit in short order...

8/3 - day 13 (4 days in a row) - rainy at dawn, our plans seemed doomed - the doctors office and more nasty and needless pain inflicted on your friend and humble narrator - kyle in the thick weather at the bk parking lot, his enthusiasm ironically undamped - we bend space n' crawl up to the beacon way to the uprising railing - cut some brush to investigate a possible line that might take you from the top of hidden treats to top of riverside's exit by the norseman's head - find an obscure and old hardman's route - many smc hangers with non-stainless bolts that are all now brown as shit, plus a big beefy nail - doesn't seem to have seen much traffic in the past 20-some-odd years - latter geoff rolls in and we head up right gull, where i'm rudely reminded i'm half the shit climber i once was

8/6 - day 14 - lap 8-9 - started w/ a doc yanking a nasty pus-infected strip of packing from my excised cyst - sad news, at least another week of not swimming for the dude, even as savage heat descends upon us, damn near clawing my eyes out to be stroking through the kewl... - beacon after some beers, two laps, both w/ shielas present, damn near paradise :)

8/7 - day 15 - lap 10 - a dentist visit left me w/ a numb face at the boat launch, wondering what the hell exactly i'm doing w/ my life but ready to take a punch - a tasteless beer in the shade of the pylon n' then it was to the business - not a soul on the face and a big shady breeze in near 90 degree temps - pouring sweat, i found redemption, if not my sense of smell - no time to linger, i made it to "infinity wars" w/ the family just moments after the credits :)

8/8 - day 16 - lap 11 -  union war planning  in the morning - teacher strikes on the march all throughout this state if The Bastards don't come to their senses soon - 98 degrees by afternoon and my back wound still unstitched i had no options but to return to church and pray that the water might readmit me soon - reached out to denali dave via the luminiferous aether on the long lunge out but the interwebs don't seem to work right and we got wildly different perceptions of the plan - spent a beer's worth of time waiting for his arrival on snag ledge before figuring out he'd run up the trail and was waiting on the summit - lit a fire under my ass to arrive up there, sodden w/ sweat, only to find him gone - lovely views up there though as the magic minute commenced and i cracked open a pbr and settled in when suddenly he appeared, making mystic motions and random runes atop the the tumult of thumb rock  - made a down-payment on the beer debt i've built up w/ our boy over the years and we sucked up the ambiance - 2 score of elk ambulating around in the emerald canal, living like lords of the earth - barges banging up the columbia as the coal trains chugged back the other direction - the smoke n haze of our smoldering earth setting everything in subtle shades of hate - sigh...the summer shall not last...

8/9 - day 17 - lap 12 - no time for dilly-dallying w/ Serious Business impending, i raced up the scorching stone, soaked in sweat, then winged it back west to the district office to behold 200-some-odd of my pissed off union brothers and sisters sharpening their pitchforks and preparing torches to Storm the Barricades (between bouts of belting down hot dogs of course :)

8/10 - day 18 - laps 13-14 - the wife away with friends of yore, i slept away the morn until even the kids were bored - they non-plussed at sallying forth, i fled beacon-ways for a bit n' had a good old mid-summer session - topher n' a lovely shiela on the siddle on down after lap one - adam honking as he raged along the road - jim n' a grand gavreet, the things of the past still the same but somehow sliding on by - lap 2 cooler still but nothing to report

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On 8/10/2018 at 8:25 PM, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

8/2 - day 12 - kyle n' i went for a look see on something new that turned out not new at all - salvaged a corner crawl - homo gummi bears on the summit - topher n' company starting up stone soup - kevbone in the lot gearing up but i had to eschew conversation to roar back west for a salary bargain sesh that went straight to shit in short order...

8/3 - day 13 (4 days in a row) - rainy at dawn, our plans seemed doomed - the doctors office and more nasty and needless pain inflicted on your friend and humble narrator - kyle in the thick weather at the bk parking lot, his enthusiasm ironically undamped - we bend space n' crawl up to the beacon way to the uprising railing - cut some brush to investigate a possible line that might take you from the top of hidden treats to top of riverside's exit by the norseman's head - find an obscure and old hardman's route - many smc hangers with non-stainless bolts that are all now brown as shit, plus a big beefy nail - doesn't seem to have seen much traffic in the past 20-some-odd years - latter geoff rolls in and we head up right gull, where i'm rudely reminded i'm half the shit climber i once was

8/6 - day 14 - lap 8-9 - started w/ a doc yanking a nasty pus-infected strip of packing from my excised cyst - sad news, at least another week of not swimming for the dude, even as savage heat descends upon us, damn near clawing my eyes out to be stroking through the kewl... - beacon after some beers, two laps, both w/ shielas present, damn near paradise :)

8/7 - day 15 - lap 10 - a dentist visit left me w/ a numb face at the boat launch, wondering what the hell exactly i'm doing w/ my life but ready to take a punch - a tasteless beer in the shade of the pylon n' then it was to the business - not a soul on the face and a big shady breeze in near 90 degree temps - pouring sweat, i found redemption, if not my sense of smell - no time to linger, i made it to "infinity wars" w/ the family just moments after the credits :)

8/8 - day 16 - lap 11 -  union war planning  in the morning - teacher strikes on the march all throughout this state if The Bastards don't come to their senses soon - 98 degrees by afternoon and my back wound still unstitched i had no options but to return to church and pray that the water might readmit me soon - reached out to denali dave via the luminiferous aether on the long lunge out but the interwebs don't seem to work right and we got wildly different perceptions of the plan - spent a beer's worth of time waiting for his arrival on snag ledge before figuring out he'd run up the trail and was waiting on the summit - lit a fire under my ass to arrive up there, sodden w/ sweat, only to find him gone - lovely views up there though as the magic minute commenced and i cracked open a pbr and settled in when suddenly he appeared, making mystic motions and random runes atop the the tumult of thumb rock  - made a down-payment on the beer debt i've built up w/ our boy over the years and we sucked up the ambiance - 2 score of elk ambulating around in the emerald canal, living like lords of the earth - barges banging up the columbia as the coal trains chugged back the other direction - the smoke n haze of our smoldering earth setting everything in subtle shades of hate - sigh...the summer shall not last...

8/9 - day 17 - lap 12 - no time for dilly-dallying w/ Serious Business impending, i raced up the scorching stone, soaked in sweat, then winged it back west to the district office to behold 200-some-odd of my pissed off union brothers and sisters sharpening their pitchforks and preparing torches to Storm the Barricades (between bouts of belting down hot dogs of course :) 

8/10 - day 18 - laps 13-14 - the wife away with friends of yore, i slept away the morn until even the kids were bored - they non-plussed at sallying forth, i fled beacon-ways for a bit n' had a good old mid-summer session - topher n' a lovely shiela on the siddle on down after lap one - adam honking as he raged along the road - jim n' a grand gavreet, the things of the past still the same but somehow sliding on by - lap 2 cooler still but nothing to report

8/12 - day 19 - lap 15 - shut down by rain, or at least the gut fear of rain, after 5 straight days of beacon goodness, i returned for an early morning lap before d'n'd w/ the kids in the afternoon - veritable dogdamn meat popsicle parade on the verge of the cool columbia - passed 13 folks on route, some with birthday caps on, many clearly up there for the first time and having fun - encountered ole chris winter who i ain't seen since the world was young and had a good gavreet - nattered about nastia w/ numerous folks in the know - maybe 10 folks on young warriors as well - topher up high on stone soup frittering time away - a fellow at the base who freed the first pitch of the soup recently and called it only 12a, how strange - woulda loved to do a second lap but time and the judgement of man made me jingle-jangle my way away back west

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On 8/12/2018 at 1:02 PM, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

8/2 - day 12 - kyle n' i went for a look see on something new that turned out not new at all - salvaged a corner crawl - homo gummi bears on the summit - topher n' company starting up stone soup - kevbone in the lot gearing up but i had to eschew conversation to roar back west for a salary bargain sesh that went straight to shit in short order...

8/3 - day 13 (4 days in a row) - rainy at dawn, our plans seemed doomed - the doctors office and more nasty and needless pain inflicted on your friend and humble narrator - kyle in the thick weather at the bk parking lot, his enthusiasm ironically undamped - we bend space n' crawl up to the beacon way to the uprising railing - cut some brush to investigate a possible line that might take you from the top of hidden treats to top of riverside's exit by the norseman's head - find an obscure and old hardman's route - many smc hangers with non-stainless bolts that are all now brown as shit, plus a big beefy nail - doesn't seem to have seen much traffic in the past 20-some-odd years - latter geoff rolls in and we head up right gull, where i'm rudely reminded i'm half the shit climber i once was

8/6 - day 14 - lap 8-9 - started w/ a doc yanking a nasty pus-infected strip of packing from my excised cyst - sad news, at least another week of not swimming for the dude, even as savage heat descends upon us, damn near clawing my eyes out to be stroking through the kewl... - beacon after some beers, two laps, both w/ shielas present, damn near paradise :)

8/7 - day 15 - lap 10 - a dentist visit left me w/ a numb face at the boat launch, wondering what the hell exactly i'm doing w/ my life but ready to take a punch - a tasteless beer in the shade of the pylon n' then it was to the business - not a soul on the face and a big shady breeze in near 90 degree temps - pouring sweat, i found redemption, if not my sense of smell - no time to linger, i made it to "infinity wars" w/ the family just moments after the credits :)

8/8 - day 16 - lap 11 -  union war planning  in the morning - teacher strikes on the march all throughout this state if The Bastards don't come to their senses soon - 98 degrees by afternoon and my back wound still unstitched i had no options but to return to church and pray that the water might readmit me soon - reached out to denali dave via the luminiferous aether on the long lunge out but the interwebs don't seem to work right and we got wildly different perceptions of the plan - spent a beer's worth of time waiting for his arrival on snag ledge before figuring out he'd run up the trail and was waiting on the summit - lit a fire under my ass to arrive up there, sodden w/ sweat, only to find him gone - lovely views up there though as the magic minute commenced and i cracked open a pbr and settled in when suddenly he appeared, making mystic motions and random runes atop the the tumult of thumb rock  - made a down-payment on the beer debt i've built up w/ our boy over the years and we sucked up the ambiance - 2 score of elk ambulating around in the emerald canal, living like lords of the earth - barges banging up the columbia as the coal trains chugged back the other direction - the smoke n haze of our smoldering earth setting everything in subtle shades of hate - sigh...the summer shall not last...

8/9 - day 17 - lap 12 - no time for dilly-dallying w/ Serious Business impending, i raced up the scorching stone, soaked in sweat, then winged it back west to the district office to behold 200-some-odd of my pissed off union brothers and sisters sharpening their pitchforks and preparing torches to Storm the Barricades (between bouts of belting down hot dogs of course :) 

8/10 - day 18 - laps 13-14 - the wife away with friends of yore, i slept away the morn until even the kids were bored - they non-plussed at sallying forth, i fled beacon-ways for a bit n' had a good old mid-summer session - topher n' a lovely shiela on the siddle on down after lap one - adam honking as he raged along the road - jim n' a grand gavreet, the things of the past still the same but somehow sliding on by - lap 2 cooler still but nothing to report

8/12 - day 19 - lap 15 - shut down by rain, or at least the gut fear of rain, after 5 straight days of beacon goodness, i returned for an early morning lap before d'n'd w/ the kids in the afternoon - veritable dogdamn meat popsicle parade on the verge of the cool columbia - passed 13 folks on route, some with birthday caps on, many clearly up there for the first time and having fun - encountered ole chris winter who i ain't seen since the world was young and had a good gavreet - nattered about nastia w/ numerous folks in the know - maybe 10 folks on young warriors as well - topher up high on stone soup frittering time away - a fellow at the base who freed the first pitch of the soup recently and called it only 12a, how strange - woulda loved to do a second lap but time and the judgement of man made me jingle-jangle my way away back west

8/13 - day 20 - lap 16 - the morning mist dispersing, 70 degrees and dappled shade and the flow of the universe over my mottled flesh sweet sick-fuck in my flayed mind - the stone as it always is, it is only the curious i that changes i swear, my skin that of a depressed doppelganger that dithers forwards out of a habit of hope  - breath and dripping sweat and sinuous movement, the mind a tabula rasa after all its rude ambulations, this is the path to paradise even if it is nothing more than an odd oroboros that ultimately dumps us in disarray at our mother's doorstep, new-eyed and obtused by age

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On 8/13/2018 at 1:45 PM, ivan said:

been neglecting logging beacon days - guess the thrill is gone and i should just lay down in my grave already - still, in the spirit of defying obdurate death, some tardy observations:

7/14/2018 - day 1, solo lap 1 - wasted from 3 weeks in the sawtooths, olympics and alpine lakes wildernesses i laid about the house on opening day, not a tad ashamed of my torpor - on bastille day though honor demanded i rise and drunkenly wobble my way beacon-wards - heat was upon the rock, but i waited until after 3 when the sun sets and fuckers off west and then sauntered on up without event - the world keeps on turning and so must we

7/15 - day 2 - ben on a hall past - 97 degrees predicted so we foolished figured we could beat the heat by meeting at 7 - breathless heat dispatched the already sunny young warriors from our minds and we settled instead for the shade of cruising on up the corner - at grassy ledges we settled in the listless shadows of the trees as i sucked down beer - uprising was punishing in the baleful glare of the hated helios - afterwards we cooled ourselves in the columbia and nattered about nothing

7/18 - day 3, lap 2 - the family fetched from the old dominion, i settled for swimming for 2 delirious days, then it was nasty labor negotiations and sitting across a big table in a small room and trying to kill the killing thoughts that creep about the minds of even common men - for therapy i bent my way beacon-wise afterwards and sidled up the basalt sidewalk, finding of all things a fraternal brother at tree ledge - impromptu union issues expounded upon and my conscience clear, i crept my way upwards into the sky

7/19 - day 4 - the hms revenge, geoff at the helm, roars into the parking lot after 3 and soon thereafter we gun down the highway running east, eager w/ life's little leavings - i'm probably not built right for corvettes, though their curvaceous lines are not insensible to my dulled senses - helmet-less as from habit i suppose, i follow on crusing and wonder where the old me who used to solo this regularly went - good times and gut laughs follow - it's pretty much always the same old story, and its a grand one, so why gaze too deep into the meat?

7/20 - day 5, lap 3 - ushered 10 year old asher priestly and his addled papa up the corner after arriving a few hours earlier and wandering up the way alone, bumping into all kinds of familiar faces along the way - shared a beer w/ 2 union members on the ledge, than pink-himself appeared along w/ arndt - discourses about dramas and days gone by, the sun keeling over as an old man on fire, we fidget and fumble for something that already has found us but lies

7/22 - day 6 - plan for a trans-columbia crossing skrewt - geoff had a grand new wave riding what-have-you and i eagerly wanted to swim the river and climb phoca rock under cape horn w/ some adult supervision, but a combination of great gusty winds and rather-big waves, plus a not-so-ready escape-driver scuppered that there plan - we settled for scuttling eastwards a bit more and nattered around the beacon-channel - geoff roared around on the the what-have-you while getting bruised n' concussed and i swum - great schools of river carp under the pilings - beer and big times - grand.7/25 - day 7, lap 4 - 3 days of summer coding-camp concluded, i scurried out cautiously into the calamitous heat - 94 degrees at the skamania mart for the beer stop but settled on climbing first instead of swimming - unremarkable ascent, concluded w/ some high times and hearty yak-yaks w/ adam at the boat-launch - got a prime plan for a full moon ascent come saturday, should anyone by so motivated

7/27 -day 8, lap 5 - built a boxing bag in the morning w/ the boy in the morning then heaved away out east -lovely swim out to pierce island and and a leisurely float back, no fish on the pylons - a bit of head medicine after drying off, ran into dave in the lot - meshed our malodorous ways  and soon thereafter headed up the corner, simul-solo - good times n' guffaws along the way - on the way down our parkour boy done went'n parkoured the fuck outta of his face :)

7/28 - day 9 - a grand get together out at adam n' claire's - the plan was to frolic in the fair columbia, dine, then climb the corner by the light of the recently full moon - didn't quite work out that way, but the first part was spot on - kyle n' amber n' geoff n' steve n' jim appeared in short order and we guffawed n' marked time as the scorching sun keeled over and the breeze blew - eventually we were at the boat launch - some swum, some shot about the channel on the blue demon, geoff's latest deadly boy-toy, and some sat in the shade and took in the scene - not a soul on the rock, even after the sun left the face - beers on pierce island and under the corner on the sandy shore - my smokes quite scuppered by a shit dry-bag - lazing by the river later on, then most left, bailing on the wonder of the moonlight ascent - swallowed my betrayal with bitefulls of lovely steak n' waiting for ben to arrive while bantering w/ my beatific hosts - darkness came and the glowing orb rose and ben roared in - adam retired to his well earned bed as we rambled on over and had an uneventful ascent, returning near 3 a.m. to natter a bit about future plans, then for ben to drive back home, leaving me to sleep in the cool air under the haughty heavens

7/31 - day 10 - lap 6 - illish health, my survival routine of swimming everyday disrupted by a disgusting infected cyst requiring lancing and antibiotics and a stern admonition by learned doctors to avoid total immersion in the local lakes - figured the corner might be a salve for my sullen soul - kevbone n' andreu on little wing - light breezes n' languid views, the world alone n' listing heavily to port - topher on the descent, bound to rap stone soup, saying the whole damn thing has been desecrated of its iron :(

8/1 - day 11 - lap 7 - the first of august upon us and my beacon rock pass weren't no good no'mo, so i wrangled w/ the bastard machine - ate my credit card, required Strong Talking To to free it and complete my civilian transaction - a dude knows kenny saw i was a brother and need and succeeded where i failed, so goes the story of my life - still, made a new friend and he followed down to the corner to film my ascent while waiting for his girlfriend to finish hiking up the trail - lovely sight of a sealion zipping on down the river - against the strong cross-wind it cut up quite the bow wave, a big light brown torpedo sizzling on down the stream, heading towards adventures unheard of

8/2 - day 12 - kyle n' i went for a look see on something new that turned out not new at all - salvaged a corner crawl - homo gummi bears on the summit - topher n' company starting up stone soup - kevbone in the lot gearing up but i had to eschew conversation to roar back west for a salary bargain sesh that went straight to shit in short order...

8/3 - day 13 (4 days in a row) - rainy at dawn, our plans seemed doomed - the doctors office and more nasty and needless pain inflicted on your friend and humble narrator - kyle in the thick weather at the bk parking lot, his enthusiasm ironically undamped - we bend space n' crawl up to the beacon way to the uprising railing - cut some brush to investigate a possible line that might take you from the top of hidden treats to top of riverside's exit by the norseman's head - find an obscure and old hardman's route - many smc hangers with non-stainless bolts that are all now brown as shit, plus a big beefy nail - doesn't seem to have seen much traffic in the past 20-some-odd years - latter geoff rolls in and we head up right gull, where i'm rudely reminded i'm half the shit climber i once was

8/6 - day 14 - lap 8-9 - started w/ a doc yanking a nasty pus-infected strip of packing from my excised cyst - sad news, at least another week of not swimming for the dude, even as savage heat descends upon us, damn near clawing my eyes out to be stroking through the kewl... - beacon after some beers, two laps, both w/ shielas present, damn near paradise :)

8/7 - day 15 - lap 10 - a dentist visit left me w/ a numb face at the boat launch, wondering what the hell exactly i'm doing w/ my life but ready to take a punch - a tasteless beer in the shade of the pylon n' then it was to the business - not a soul on the face and a big shady breeze in near 90 degree temps - pouring sweat, i found redemption, if not my sense of smell - no time to linger, i made it to "infinity wars" w/ the family just moments after the credits :)

8/8 - day 16 - lap 11 -  union war planning  in the morning - teacher strikes on the march all throughout this state if The Bastards don't come to their senses soon - 98 degrees by afternoon and my back wound still unstitched i had no options but to return to church and pray that the water might readmit me soon - reached out to denali dave via the luminiferous aether on the long lunge out but the interwebs don't seem to work right and we got wildly different perceptions of the plan - spent a beer's worth of time waiting for his arrival on snag ledge before figuring out he'd run up the trail and was waiting on the summit - lit a fire under my ass to arrive up there, sodden w/ sweat, only to find him gone - lovely views up there though as the magic minute commenced and i cracked open a pbr and settled in when suddenly he appeared, making mystic motions and random runes atop the the tumult of thumb rock  - made a down-payment on the beer debt i've built up w/ our boy over the years and we sucked up the ambiance - 2 score of elk ambulating around in the emerald canal, living like lords of the earth - barges banging up the columbia as the coal trains chugged back the other direction - the smoke n haze of our smoldering earth setting everything in subtle shades of hate - sigh...the summer shall not last...

8/9 - day 17 - lap 12 - no time for dilly-dallying w/ Serious Business impending, i raced up the scorching stone, soaked in sweat, then winged it back west to the district office to behold 200-some-odd of my pissed off union brothers and sisters sharpening their pitchforks and preparing torches to Storm the Barricades (between bouts of belting down hot dogs of course :) 

8/10 - day 18 - laps 13-14 - the wife away with friends of yore, i slept away the morn until even the kids were bored - they non-plussed at sallying forth, i fled beacon-ways for a bit n' had a good old mid-summer session - topher n' a lovely shiela on the siddle on down after lap one - adam honking as he raged along the road - jim n' a grand gavreet, the things of the past still the same but somehow sliding on by - lap 2 cooler still but nothing to report

8/12 - day 19 - lap 15 - shut down by rain, or at least the gut fear of rain, after 5 straight days of beacon goodness, i returned for an early morning lap before d'n'd w/ the kids in the afternoon - veritable dogdamn meat popsicle parade on the verge of the cool columbia - passed 13 folks on route, some with birthday caps on, many clearly up there for the first time and having fun - encountered ole chris winter who i ain't seen since the world was young and had a good gavreet - nattered about nastia w/ numerous folks in the know - maybe 10 folks on young warriors as well - topher up high on stone soup frittering time away - a fellow at the base who freed the first pitch of the soup recently and called it only 12a, how strange - woulda loved to do a second lap but time and the judgement of man made me jingle-jangle my way away back west

8/13 - day 20 - lap 16 - the morning mist dispersing, 70 degrees and dappled shade and the flow of the universe over my mottled flesh sweet sick-fuck in my flayed mind - the stone as it always is, it is only the curious i that changes i swear, my skin that of a depressed doppelganger that dithers forwards out of a habit of hope  - breath and dripping sweat and sinuous movement, the mind a tabula rasa after all its rude ambulations, this is the path to paradise even if it is nothing more than an odd oroboros that ultimately dumps us in disarray at our mother's doorstep, new-eyed and obtused by age

8/19 - day 21 - lap 17 - after a week at buxom lake quinault, i was querulous with cooped up beacon longings - sure, two grand lake crossings, both clad as a glorified white-walrus, did excite the meat in the marrow, but gawdamn it ain't quite the same, is it?  the rock much as i left it, rudely exposed to heat and wind, but rife w/ life - a crew with a dude named cannon i think - kayakers all upon the sound, fallen several feet from last i'd seen it - a lovely dmm off-set nut that i shall have come tomorrow morning or me name's not cheap-skate-mcgee :)

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