[TR] Hood-Wand - Vernal Venture up the V Slot of Luetholds 4/23/0

[ivan]

Trip: Hood-Wand - Vernal Venture up the V Slot of Luetholds

 

Date: 4/23/2011

 

Trip Report:

by popular demand, i must pad my tr lead

 

first saturday of sun for fucks sake in many a fortnight it seemed - plans kicked about for months on end w/ several fools, idealy for a n face climb - the mighty mitochondria, a svelte slav, not half my stature i'll wager, the driving force - the wife understandably leary of letting a rare piece of prime rib such as myself out by my lonesome w/ a lady, i'd worked to get beaconben or whoever into the mix but in the end it was this weekend or nothign really, and not a real man to be found...sigh. even our mutual miscreant, olegv, was deep in the downward spirals of a moscow mind-fuck, dead to the world it seemed, bumptious and billious.

 

decided to reduce the plan to a single day - i'm too fat and lazy to enjoy the n side w/o spending a night out, so why not poke about the sandy? maybe the upper bit of yocums? hell...i'll be impressed if i can even get my ass packed and motivated out the door

 

renaming anastasia "cop magnet" 'cuz twice in twenty minutes she had the fuzz crawling all over us, angry cop probocis out and probing feverishly - pulled into the p-lot in gresham, head screwed on nice and tight after an hour nap and a few big breaths, to see the po-po dismounted and flashlight equipped, grilling poor-girl on why she was staking out a closed-up starbucks at a stroke past midnight, sitting there in her slick ride - now a man w/ a headfull of half-baked crazy has little sense throwing himself into such a fray, but i felt a bit responsible for having picked out the rendezovous so i parked a discrete bit away and shayshayed on over, hands in plain sight, to shoot the cop some shit - he didn't seem too amused, but agreed to fuck off straight away and so off we sped a few minutes later all set to see what we could do with the hood-wand

 

a couple minutes later, lashing through the interstellar wastelands between sandy and fuck-knows oregon, chattering away in her heathen english, "cop magnet" had a fast mover come ranging right up on her, tail-gating big time - i was just finish a stoogie, so thought it only proper to flick off the cherry into the slipstream and give homeboy a shot across the bow - yeah, a few nano-seconds later a galaxy of coplights glittered on up, and not half a minute after that we're on the side of the road in a comic state of searching for licenses, registrations, excuses, and jesus-fuck, a way to roll the goddamn window down? home-slice was on the verge of giving poor old anasatsia the ticket to sack her license once and for all and smug old me an even bigger one for having the audacity to eject flaming material out the ride in the depths of spring (i had the butt still in my rukers though!), but fortune felt some fool not far off needed to threaten to kill hisself, and so he gave us The Big Riot Act and then raced off, leaving a couple inches of fresh rubber on the road, in the right goddamn direction to relieve us for some time

 

so there we were in the stillness of timberline at 1 fucking a.m., fucking hordes of hood-aspirants in all directions like radioactive flies on frigid whores - we packed up fast enough and in the cave started what would be a theme for the day, meeting a half-dozen folks who cop-magnet knew, and who all somehow knew me through the miracles of the intrewubs

 

slow, slow, slow i was on that saunter up the palmer - couldn't help but compare anastasia's rhode-island sized pack to the dakota-ish dimensions of my own - excuses, excuses - at least she'd thrown in some non-russian smokes to my load to counterbalance the 2 lbs of half-cooked bacon i'd brought along - good dog that i am, she afforded me a sit-down for a few seconds at the palmer top to suck down a cig and 2 cups of honey-tea while she jousted w/ KK in their pidgin tongues

i continued the trend of the day, lagging behind the lady as she raced mountie hordes in the half-growing light to i-rock - i was locked all day in a deep zombie-funk, trodding half asleep or more, too tired even to listen to music proper - had meant to figure out a way to nap before the late night launch but somehow it never worked out?

 

one groggy bastard cowed under castle crag

we lit off, a bit behind the mounties who were well ahead on luetholds and a party reid-bound

yeah, that about sums it up

we went off around yocums to see how the sandy looked, but not too far along the traverse 'stasia stopped digging how her tools had no decent spike for plunging and i started feeling The Fear that i'd lose gas far from home

 

don't know quite how to untilt this'un, at the start of the traverse low down on yocum

we decided to just wander up luetholds to the hourglass, and check out the upper buttress of yocums

stare at feet, stumble-fuck further

paused to catch our breath by the hourglass - could easily have had a phine phat nap here

ice bandsaws!

snow was shitty and post-holish, the hour was later than wanted, and generally the energy lacking for messing w/ yocum, so we settled for sauntering up the rest of luetholds - easyish snow, hardly any ice, a bit of styrofoam here and there

jesus christ i forgot how much stumbling there is to be done above the hour-glass! cop-magnet shot well ahead and i slooooooowed on down some more

 

as i broke into the sun i broke out my sunglasses and strait-off dropped the wife's cell phone, which shot off like a pissed off pelican - forutnately for my maritial relationship i was able to downclimb to retrive the 3 pieces it fractured into, and here came on back up

i'd rather forget the rest - shuffle-fuck up cathedral - great views and dim wind - pretty, pretty crystals everywhere - saunter off to the summit - holy shit it was cold up there!

 

one wee, one not so wee, and one frigging huge

the descents always the best - giggle-fits and fuck-all laughter, lounging about the hogsback and points below - strung together several quick naps, waking w/ numb hands and drool-soaked gloves - met more than a few folks who knew our brave summit team - shits and sheenanigins - sunshine scorching 'stasia's face - dalliances w/ dharmabum - hollering hillbilly fuckall folktunes

 

back in the lot - jesus-god, is that oleg? rumors and ruminations - mt hood food - beer w/ beacon on it - russian caviar - machinations - the slow boat home - escape velocity acheived - home - sleeeeeeep!

Edited April 27, 2011 by ivan

[YocumRidge]

A hard to forget trip.

Thanks to the glorious Ivan for the laugh and full entertainment value!

As if it could be any different.

 

A couple of comments on my behalf.

 

Over the last week, Ivan's fatal attraction to the Stone Soup at the glamorous Baconwand was shattered with the positive weather outlook for Hood. However, my naive offering to do a speed ascent of the well covered Yocum Ridge a la Ueli Steck did not meet much of his enthusiasm cuz he does not like "to be compared to aliens" . So, "speed" in our case would not mean "faster", but rather "shorter".

 

Our delightful arrival at First Gendarme at 8600' was accompanied by the Ivan's profound Shakespearian recitation from Macbeth (if I am not mistaken?), which abruptly ceased as we progressed further. A thought crossed my mind that he might be getting sick at that point or how else would you account for him being silent for once?

 

All that and the perspectives of his wife suing me if something was to happen to him (although he did smartly upgrade his life insurance by then ) made Leutholds a more viable variation of Yocum .

 

The Legendary: Yocum Ridge

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and the 2 lbs of bacon from the Dakota-sized pack came in very handy.

[ZimZam]

Flicking the cherry at the tailgating po-po. Fuckin' classic.

[Gaucho Argentino]

Freaking funny report and very cool pics !!

[dhrmabum]

Good dallying with you guys, though I have to admit, that bacon was a bit. . funky! Ok, well, just slightly undercooked but still tasty. And, Ivan's folksinging might be underappreciated by some, but I thought it lent itself well to a fine day in the mountains. There's gotta be a band in Pdx. that needs such a well-versed, rootsy folk-singer. Good on you two.

[OlegV]

yeee, it sounds like an era of brave mountaneering is over... although it is always nice to meet old friends... let me tell you, this weather took a lot out of us.

 

 

 

[spionin]

hilarious!

good job dodging tickets (oh, and the awesomne climb, too)!

[Fairweather]

 

don't know quite how to untilt this'un, at the start of the traverse low down on yocum

 

The horizon as a metaphor? Best I could do. Here ya go.

 

 

[zoroastr]

i opened your file in MS Paint and hit the "untilt" button.

 

[ivan]

coolness - looks like 45 degrees? i was so in danger!

 

[YocumRidge]

Yeah, in danger of being sucked by the cops but you survived

[miker]

His singing gets spotty when he gets tired/sketched. Macbeth or was it Beowulf?

Congrats on getting on some alpine.