[TR] Colon-raid-O - Mt Princeton - George W Bush Memorial Route 8/5/2012

[ivan]

Trip: Colon-raid-O - Mt Princeton - George W Bush Memorial Route

 

Date: 8/5/2012

 

Trip Report:

okay, okay, doing a 14'er in colorado ain't much of a much, but it's high time that running-dog feller's gonna come along and cock-block me on my quest to get the first century-note of cc.com tr's, so a honky's gotta make do, see? so then, i shall make up for my trip's lack of merit w/ tremendous mendacity n' maybe a sideways jab at our less-than-illustrious motherfucker #43 that might well land me on some sorta homeland security watch-list

 

for many years now my folks have been making a summer residence in the sleepy abode of alpine, colorado, a hole-in-the-wall nestled into a valley separating mts altero n' princeton in chaffee county, not too far off from the prison-fuck-me complex of buena vista n' the jesus-christ-is-this-all mecca of salida - the local gentry are a bit a of study in post-apocalyptic genetics, but the setting n' history are compelling, and w/ 2 14k peaks literally in the back yard of their quaint cabin, i can't complain when the old man buys my clan passage on a commodious southwest 737 from portland to denver, then comes to fetch us w/ some cold beer on the side - by my reckoning, this is the 4th annual pilgrimage we've made

 

intent on actually death-marching my kid-os on the trip this year, after several years in a row managing little in the way of aerobic adventures beyond venturing 100 yards from the truck to feed shiftless ground squirrels in the nearby ghost-town of st. elmo, i mushed the wife n' progenies on a 3 mile hike here in the flatlands of vantucky the day before our flight - here the wulfman is being bought-off of his athletic bitterness near mile 2 w/ a couple sour-patch kids while his sister, wrapped in stolen ivy laurels, gesticulates insensibly as i hide in their shadows, invisible but for my beacon-rock-stigmata later we made it to safeway, where they were further bribed w/ a buck each in candy-cash and me w/ a box of gut-rot burgundy

flush w/ victory, or at least something north of total defeat, we winged it out to the centennial state the next day - a grand flight actually, at 2 hrs practically the perfect length, and a long glide into denver w/ rods of lightening lancing into the ground all around us, jet bucking and dipping like a bronco w/ a brand up his ass, did the job of reminding us of that tendentious tenet that Life is Really Worth Living

 

a much longer drive from denver to the house through the pouring rain - horror-struck to find my pbr was of the same fucked vintage as the swill in your common u-tard convenience store - cruel talk of my common avocation n' career - disregard for a life of danger (lame as it is) - my californications dispensed with - darkness down the last stretch of lonely highway - wine n' liquor in the rarefied air of 9600 feet, then to sleep in the dark hole of the basement, rigged up schooner-style, the kids racked-out above us - bloody noses by dawn in the dryness n' stifling cabin - nightmares of the month done with, and back to work w/ hormonal, high-born weasels - the calmness of the crepuscular sky at the rising of the sun

 

mission #1 this year was horse-abuse - we returned to a right-nice ranch on the flanks of raspberry mountain, across from chalk creek n' the princeton hot-springs - my dad bailed out on the goodness, so just the five of us for a two-hour tour - once again i drew a quarter-horse/mustang combo-meal called pinto - a froward horse by all reckonings, but set a big old bitch like myself atop her, hungover and w/ a hankering for hurting something huge, and soon enough we get it all set to rights

 

here we are near the end of the 2nd hour, most of the meat-puppets pictured smelling the barn and wanting to get back sometign fierce

yippie-kiy-yeah-muthafuckers - jesus christ, do they make a model of horse big enough for a bastard like me?

near the end of the ride, i got my sights set on mt princeton, the highpt behind me in the way-back

needed another day of carbo-loading n' couch-loafing before attempting that awe-inspiring feat though, so we had a leisurely breakfast, then headed down to the hotsprings - imported help, life guards, czech-style - holy hell, are those REAL?!? slides n' sunburns - books n' bullshit - gandhi n' wild turkey n' root-beer n' glares in my cop-glasses - eowyn, my fair-haired daughter, so full of my own fears n' loathings, here so fuck-all happy to do endless laps down the watery way of glory

this expression makes it quite clear her thoughts on tagging along w/ me the next day for a humble 4000 feet of high-stakes hiking

so, fuckit, looks like a solo-thing for me on the 'morrow, but the family can still catch a gut-laugh at the chaffee county rodeo-hoe-down, no?

 

the parking lot pretty much sums up the scene - the funny thing of course was the car in front of this feller had just as much pro-bama shit on it

i can't claim to have carried meself half-sober through that many a rodeo, but jesus-fuck this one seemed cock-billed n' lop-sided! do the animals usually win 96% of the time or were all the contestants as drunk as sloppy hillbillies at high-noon of a sabbath?

all good things end, and a cold wind sprung up and the elephant-ears were dispatched - the last rodeo diehard was bucked off in a bitter 5 seconds, and the announcer kindly asked if we might not get the fuck out after saluting old glory one last goddamn time - we found some diversion in the big tent - corn-bread displays n' prize-cauliflower - rocks n' rutabagas - anthropological examinations of an arch-odd world of which i have but a tangent part

 

next morning i was up at 5 amid night-dreams of jesus-fuck - my bags all packed, my father engaged, i noshed on biscuit n' country ham n' weak coffee in an open-top jeep, shivering like a sum'bitch under a flannel coat in the coursing wind - baby porcupines n' fatherly-talk of killing the lesser things - a climb up a classic colorado rough-track to 10k, where the old man kicked me out and headed off for home to make coffee n' bacon for the little ones, awaiting a call from me at the summit

i danced off through the growing day, poling along the dusty track - mt princeton this prissy phuck is called - seems a right-right appellation to me - like that citadel of haughty half-wits, so ably represented by that rare-auold retard of post 9/11 renown, it too is stupid and brooding, crest-broken and bowed but in love w/ its own bullshit baptismal credentials - nothing to it but wind and half-cured cumstains, a curious track well-worn by witless welfare queen-haters locked into their quotidianal quest to queue-fuck the common man

 

more than a few cars parked along the road past the towers, before the cast-off point around 11k

luna leaping up above the peak i lazily figured was my paramour - fuck it all, dontcha know, this was but the prick-tease of princeton

leaving the road, climbing up the crusty step-stones cut of the living mountain, i came to grips w/ the true task - ultimately it was just 3 hours from the cell-towers to summit, at a fair clip, w/ a short stop to music-up n' gob down some gummy-worms at 13k

talus side-hiking till time to stop for pictures, all glowing in the glowering

a thousand feet to go, meat-popsicles but little particles on our parting way

a few feet below the summit - some fellas is lucky, some ain't? can't say a lesson's been learned - i was down to the towers just 5 hours after leaving, and well before noon, but a bakers dozen i passed wouldn't be in the zone of safety by then, and w/ big ass thunderclouds growing then too

ivan on top - since my first visit to the state in the flush of the bush-baby, i've managed 3 14'ers - by my calculations, at this rate, i oughta get the list completed by something like 2172 AD

an obvious look back at the "route" - reckon this might be a more serious endeavor in the bitter cold of winter?

looking south to antero, which i managed, orv-enabled, 2 years back - my folks place is in the valley between - a nice hike out the back yard leads you up to what i labed "eowyn's peak" after my own dear daughter

norhtwest towards mt elbert i reckon, my first colon-raid-o high-as-georgia-pine route

i rollicked off the summit, free as a fuck-pepper, down to cold-beer n' lunch w/ the kids and then movies in the rain - next mornign the little lady and i and the old man made a slow trek up the grouse-creek trail - my dad departed early, and so the missus and i had a chance to soak in the sun in "molly's meadow" looking up at my object of the day before

horrid aliens

alpine daisies in the dry meadow

our last full day a bit of a cock-up - ghost trains in the gloaming - the old man hollering at me like i'm a half-century younger - the little girl melting down only a bit past midnight - the wife walking into walls and falling down halls - long drive - radio-songs of the long dead '80s - car sickness for the half-cured - plane flights next to plenty fat-fucks - pleasing portland - a run to safeway - machinations - machines of fuck-you-grace - culminations - plans half-laid for peradventures coming on - typing into the night - trueblood - time wasting, wasting, wasting...

 

 

Gear Notes:

a clean conscience

 

Approach Notes:

cloud, hill and dale

[billcoe]

LOL, love it. Nothing like a family vacation to remember why you like some things and hate others. You almost could have ducked over to the Black Canyon for a lap.....they got nasty poison oak/ivy in most of the gullies there which makes ours look like polite shit having high tea. Looks like you were out of the growth zone where you were at least.

[Mtguide]

Winner of the Grand Trip Report Prize for the year!!

 

-Endearing yet effective(and well-deserved) sarcasm

 

-extra points for metaphoric cornholing of GWB,rednecks,etc.

 

-cutest rugrat pics

 

-overall literary rating: 5.13d

 

-demonstrates exemplary ability to persevere and triumph despite extreme adversity (dullness, bad beer, relatives, forbidding trailside memorials)

 

 

 

[ivan]

You almost could have ducked over to the Black Canyon for a lap.....they got nasty poison oak/ivy in most of the gullies there which makes ours look like polite shit having high tea. Looks like you were out of the growth zone where you were at least.

it's somethign like 2 hours to gunnison from the folks house i hear and i reckon it'll be years before i can pysch the crew up to come support me in my hobbies on the family vacation - was hoping to do the diamond first though

[pcg]

Next time you go down to see your folks, you should consider doing the Rabbit Ears traverse between Harvard and Columbia. It’s much more Ivanesque than the slog up Princeton, though nowhere near as grand as the Diamond. You can stay at the base of the ridge and it’s an easy scramble, or you can stay near the top and spice things up. I’ve never gone across the top because I was always solo and too scared to travel “sans cord”, as you put it. Speaking of sans-cord, I've read that Steph Davis has done the Diamond several times in that fashion.

[ivan]

Speaking of sans-cord, I've read that Steph Davis has done the Diamond several times in that fashion.

about the only thing steph and i have in common though is that we both have pretty sweet boobs

 

but holy shit, sure, gotta keep that in mind for next year - how far is this traverse from princeton ya think? reasonalbe to do the whole enchilada in a day, so as to not piss off my peeps?

[pcg]

how far is this traverse from princeton ya think?

As the crow flies, just a few miles. Columbia is immediately NW of Buena Vista.

reasonalbe to do the whole enchilada in a day, so as to not piss off my peeps?

Yes. It's commonly done in one long day.

 

 

 

 

 

[kevbone]

More pictures less writing broham.

 

Love the picture of you on that little tiny horse. I did not know they made a horse that would fit you.

 

 

[LostCamKenny]

yippie-kiy-yeah-muthafuckers - jesus christ, do they make a model of horse big enough for a bastard like me?

did the horse ask you for a ride on the way back?

[pink]

thanks for the heads up u were in colorado negro

 

[JosephH]

More pictures less writing

Making mountains out of chosspiles is sort of what we do here in the PNW. Ivan does the same with life and we are the constant beneficiaries of his 'labors'. And in the case of his TRs I'd say a picture is not worth a thousand words, but rather the reverse.

[pink]

More pictures less writing

Making mountains out of chosspiles is sort of what we do here in the PNW. Ivan does the same with life and we are the constant beneficiaries of his 'labors'. And in the case of his TRs I'd say a picture is not worth a thousand words, but rather the reverse.

 

i think kevin is just pokin fun joseph.....

[Whatcomboy]

"crepuscular sky"?, I had to look that word up.

[ivan]

yippie-kiy-yeah-muthafuckers - jesus christ, do they make a model of horse big enough for a bastard like me?

did the horse ask you for a ride on the way back?

i'd ride a clydesdale if only the size of their johnson didn't ashame me too much to allow it

[ivan]

"crepuscular sky"?, I had to look that word up.

like so many fancy, fancy words i know, i gleaned it from rick atkinson's "army at dawn" - jebus christ, my sat verbal score was tits, but in that book i musta learned a new word every page! "diaphanous" also occurs there, and pairs up neatly w/ crepuscular

 

my favorite verb though, was "debouche" - ah, tish, that's french!

[ivan]

thanks for the heads up u were in colorado negro

how'm i supposed to keep my kids on the farm after they've met karl hungus?

[stevetimetravlr]

Great TR Ivan~! but poor horse.