Big Lou Non-Sighting

[Dwayner]

The phone rang late Friday night. It was pope begging for alpine excellence. With but one day for adventure, he shared a dream...a geometrically-shaped monolith on the flanks of Tahoma that had captured his imagination for years. I think you know what I'm talking about: Pyramid Peak. Fast forward. 06:07 Sat. morning. pope is 7 minutes late and I'm starting to pace. A squeal of brakes and a skid mark in my driveway and moments later we're MRNP bound. Time flies quickly as I search pope's extra-large pack for his 10 essentials and before we know it, we're heading into Ashford. The car seemed to be on auto-pilot as we slowly turned into the parking lot of the Whittaker Bunkhouse. In seconds, pope had grabbed his Bunkhouse coffee mug and was sprinting for the door. He wasn't ready for what awaited him....whereas before, he had had the luxury of basking in the ambience of a veritable Musée du Lou, the place was crowded with RMI summit contenders, nervously shuffling in anticipation of their high-paced slog to Muir. The young pretty who had so patiently absorbed pope's attempts at cool-cat innuendo a couple of weeks ago was now cranking out an endless stream of latte's. It was looking pretty random until some tall, nerdy lookin', jackass-corporate-exec.-climbin'-the-big-mountain-to-discover-himself type, comes in yackin, "Where's the line? There should be a line!" It took all I had to refrain from doing a little goose-stepping for him to make him feel at home. pope stood in line quietly and got his coffee. His usual playful swagger had vanished in the chaos of the early morning line-up and to top it off, BIG LOU WAS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN!!! Let's get outta here...NOW!, ordered pope. We arrived shortly at the West Side Road and found the now unmarked trail leading up to I. Hank's Hunting Ground.

Pyramid Peak: it really looks like a pyramid. Mr. pope thought it would be extremely remote and technical thus the Big Wall rack, bivouac gear and the double-nine ropes he hauled up. To his disappointment, there was a trail to the top. It ain't the summit it's the journey, right? (snicker) And among the highlites, we found a mysterious black hair comb on a log and six young ladies asked us if we knew a good place to go swimming because they were hot and sweaty. pope was ready to turn around and show them the nearest mosquito-filled puddle of rain water but I grabbed him by the collars and shook him. "Get a hold of yourself, man! We got work to do! Where's your alpine spirit!" He came to his senses. We hiked out and headed for home. pope looked out the opposite window as we drove by the Bunkhouse and I could see a small tear in his eye. "Next time..", I tried to comfort him. "Next time....he'll be there!!".

 

[Lambone]

Nice report Dwayner. Not that it matters, but I saw Big Lou at Vertical World last week. He was doing a talk for some corporate group, and I got to shake his hand

He is definately a big guy...

[Wopper]

In case anybody was wondering...I didn't see Big Lou this week-end either.

[EddieE]

He wasn't at Washington Pass either...but a group of Mountaineers kicking rocks down on me was.

[johnny]

Hmmmmmmmm. I was on the West face of Guye peak Sunday and I didn't see him either. So where the hell was he anyway?

[Dan_Petersen]

I was wondering where I left that comb.

[Doug]

Lambone,

Was Big Lou talking about a pope sighting?

[Doug]

So that's what he was talking about.....I coulda sworn that I heard "poop" and "straining", so I figured "BL" was just constipated....

[jblakley]

Not sure if this is at all related but I was up at Muir a few weeks ago and overhear 'BL' complaining to some of his peons that some dude named 'Poop' was stalking him and that he was thinking about a restraining order.

[pope]

At 5:52 a.m. Saturday morning, Pope killed his engine and coasted quietly into Dwayner's driveway. He removed the key from his car's ignition prior to opening the door...he didn't want Dwayner to lecture him about any unnecessary noise from those annoying safety beepers. Pope cautiously tip-toed up the driveway, making every attempt to be absolutely quiet. Pope even held his breath as he rounded the corner toward Dwayner's patio, where he stepped on a pine cone. Suddenly, Dwayner burst out of the house. "You idiot! I've got neighbors here, and they're trying to sleep. Could you try showing a little respect? I mean, just because there's a pine cone there, it doesn't mean you have to step on it. You don't have to live near these people, but they're my neighbors. I don't want to have to apologize for all of the noise you're making. And furthermore, ....."

After more than an hour of listening to Dwayner play Zappa's "Dangerous Kitchen", Pope was hankering for some snackage, and he suggested a visit to the Bunk Haus. Dwayner burst into the coffee shop, slamming the door into a nearby table where two crunchy girls, who had been reading a Bonnnington book, gave Dwayner stink eye.

Finally on the trail, Dwayner expressed his excitement about exploring this remote corner of MRNP. A sign cautioned that we were traveling an unmaintained trail, and we saw no evidence of humans, only the tracks of some enormous mountain cat. Just as Pyramid Peak came into view, Pope noticed a comb sitting on a stump. Dwayner expressed his disgust that there seemed to be no remaining wilderness that hasn't been molested by sport climbers.

From there things just got worse. Not only did we have to share our objective (what we had thought to both a unique idea and a great accomplishment) with other hikers, we found a pile of human excrement on the summit. Even Pope knows better than to behave like that.

[This message has been edited by pope (edited 08-28-2001).]