[TR] Mayhem in the Mountains - Miscellaneous Manglings 8/1/2014

[ivan]

Trip: Mayhem in the Mountains - Miscellaneous Manglings

 

Date: 8/1/2014

 

Trip Report:

summer crawls sadly towards conclusion, but not without my annual aestival injury - stupid shit as always, went for a fun swim in the oneonta gorge w/ the wulf-man n' wifey and wrenched my left wing flinging my fool self into the big pool below the water-fall - took it out for a test-spin the day after at beacon to see if i could still make my alpine play-date w/ geoff for a few days later and ended up drinking beer n' smoking shit w/ jim at the base for an hour as it quickly became obvious the fuckign thing needed healing

 

3 days was all it got, but serendipity slid in on the back end - ole'nastia, the k-19 killer, rang my bell just 2 days before we were to leave, inquiring in the most random of coincidences if i might want to climb the exact objective geoff and i already had our eyes on: razorback ridge on mt stuart

 

wonderful, really - the two XY members of the team each have a chaperon to chill the wives out on the possibility of being cuckolded, and should my shoulder send me packing after all that walking, geoff doesn't get skunked on his ascent

 

the tragic trio meet at mi case round noon on thursday and we cast off, me drinking wine n' beer n' cider most of the way and having a gay olde-time - nastia w/ stories of her recent goode-gallivant, geoff on the speaker-phone w/ some folks who have problems far more fucked then anythign i ever hope to get near

 

cle elum in the early evening, we gathered supplies, then i took the tiller to take us to the teenaway trailhead - the waxing gibbous moon goads us all to get packed up and gambol along to ingalls lake in preparation for our glorious adventure

 

nastia near ready to leave the twain of us too phat-phucks in the dust as we ascend the endless uphill in ozzy-osbourne style

my advocate and i didn't exactly set the world on fire on our walk up, but we were high as georgia pine and generally happy, so the miles melted away and i got all giddy holding forth on civics and such - eventually we rendezvoused w/ the ruskaya up at the pass and picked out a place to sleep for a few hours before renewing the assualt

 

past 11, i noshed n' reclined in my bivy sack sans sleeping bag and contemplated the main-stay of my rations for the next 2 days - "it ain't neither rich nor rare" i heard some no-account nobody notice at some point

we settled in for sleep and 5 hours quickly passed, geoff sawing away at the logs as i lazed on my wounded side, worryign away the high-whines of legions of mozzies swirling around my half-clad head and trying not to feel chilly w/ just a jacket for a blanket

 

445 and we're on the move, molested by millions of swamp-vampires who vouch-safe to get us to the station on time - the light grows and soon we're just below ingalls lake

 

and there tragedy makes mirth for us all - the ruskaya is rushing forth, turning now and again to rouse us to greater speed, when suddenly she stumbles a bit and falls - no big deal, i figure, given the number of goddamn times i've eaten shit while innocently walking along without worry, but not so now - in falling her hand rakes along the stick she was using in place of a pole, and a protuberance in the wood rips a raged, ugly hole in her ruker

blood squirts and sizzles on stone in the early morning sun and she goes down like a school-bus full of li'l shits into a deep, deep lake - didn't know whether to laugh or get seriously worried as she got all gray and seemed on the verge of fading away into the Great Nothingness

 

we threw all the first-aid articles we had at her: pad, pillow, toilet-paper, tobacco - i offered to pour my precious whiskey on the wound but the look on her face worried me that that might have slightly contrarian conclusions

so it was time for a dramatic reappraisal of the whole what-have-you - nastia not long for this world it felt, she sure as hell was out - my shoulder still a big question mark, and the start of the route still a great big long way off - seemed the responsible thing was to get her stationed by the shores of the lake, just a few hundred yards away, see how she panned out, and if she seemed promising enough to part from a few hours, we'd go off and climb ingalls peak

 

we paused for a bit in the dawn light by the lake - mosquitoes by the mega-fuck-load laid seige to our stymied crew as each retreated into the sad shelter of their bivy-sack

ingalls seemed an okay enough consolation prize for not being the one to get the chop - problem was of course geoff and i had no beta nor first inkling of where the dog route was - in hindsight, we shoulda just approached it as any other clue-less critter would, but nastia said she thought you both climbed and rapped down the right side, above a big obvious snowpatch

seemed sensibly enough, and surely not hard to get at, so after a bit of a break to see how she would hold-up, we sauntered off

 

rush-hour traffic round the lake, commuters passing in silent contemplation of the ruinous demands of their sad little lives

so...long story short, yeah, we'd picked the rap line off the peak apparently to make our climb - looked sorta un-settling from just below but whatever, who doesn't like steep snow and scrambling up rude, shady, flour-pasted rock?

in our innocence both of us felt ill-used - how could this be a classic, or even an easy-moderate for that matter? we mucked about for a good long while, trying this and that, and ultimately i got bitchy - this shit ain't no fun, and an endless number of sketchily perched blocks portended great doom in arguing w/ this abomination - we made an informed, democratic decision to have a smoke and scoot-down

 

back at the lake the lady had time to keen her wound, swelter in the sun, and take in the local wild-life

noon now, we set about re-considering our position - supplied to spend the night out, the million mozzies made it seem stupid and pointless now - even in the mid-day sun the savage insects invaded our senses - we said nothing for a while and went our seperate ways - geoff to bath in the gentle waters, nastia to nod off, me to swill cheap-whiskey and whip off the remainders of my white-trash cigarettes

 

mid-afternoon it was time to ambule off - storm clouds wracked the horizon, and as we saw stuart begin to glow a horrid-purple, wreathed in growing ruin, i couldn't help but feel as if sexy-fate hadn't done us a solid - stuart might not have got shit on squarely that day but sweet-jesus we woulda been having a heart attack if we'd gotten on route that morning

 

the walk out was quick enough, the boom of thunder and the rush of wind driving us forward - the far side of the pass and numerous legions passed us heading up into the hate - eventually we roll into the parking lot and sit around, me finishing off my sammy and sucking down the dregs of the whiskey

 

so what next? no beta for nothing, and can't do no goddamn cc.retard trip-report w/o a coon-skin to nail to the wall, wouldn'tcha say? so i figured, why not guye peak? done it 2 times before, once in summer, once in winter, but not been back in quite a long time - surely i can remember how to do it just fine?

 

got a big old bunch of hard cider to suck on in the alpental parking lot and we passed the evening in low-life style - saturday morning we lazed as the masses assembled for their mega-assault of das toof and whatever - i breakfasted on alcoholic apple-juice, crime-book and camels as the rest of the crew slept in - eventually they roused and supped and we set off, nastia at the helm as she hadn't driven a stick-shift since her savage days gone by in sweet mother russia, and we needed her to spare us a mile of road-walking

 

geoff and i rambled up the talus-field, which jesus-fuck i'd forgotten how forlorn that thing was - couldnt' hardly stand still most of the way without settling down 10 more feet

 

nearing the top of the talus, the thunder began to arrive

awkward moments - what to do? storms seem to be assemblign - who wants to get thunder-fucked on a playground-peak where rapping off ain't all that straight-forward?

 

we took in the hills, ate a late breakfasts and sucked down some of the good stuff - all day the skies would look like this, the threat of rain with storm-bands sauntering by- lighting not far away, yet each round mostly missing us, leaving just the odd drops and scent of fear - that evening we'd get it good n' proper though, mercifully once off the route

the route was as i remembered - easy but edgy - not a lot of pro - blocky and chossy - the improbable traverse the money part, though scary for the second, 'specially with an anchor made of little more than angst

 

geoff after the traverse

the rest went well enough - mostly walking it seems with the occasional willy-nilly bit - on top by late afternoon, big rain in the making, we fled on fleet feet

 

near guye-lake the shit we'd sallied around all day set in and it stormed long and loud and proud for the better part of an hour

quite the descent trail, which i'd forgot - how forlorn to hike up that hateful thing, but down, down, down in the pouring rain was good enough - we tumbled out of the soaked bush as the booming went away and wandered into the parking lot

 

final joy of push-starting a powerless rig robbed of juice by the russian who was jamming out to the radio all day, we roar off into the distance

 

one last look at the lazy guye peak - how pleasing to have that vista in your back yard?

here's hoping the season has one last un-sordid surprise for us

[JasonG]

I feel your angst.

 

 

[YocumRidge]

I had to fertilize the Stuart range soil with a liter of fresh erythrocytes...

Geoff's truck has a weird clutch - it is why he advised me not to use it much - I stalled only once over the 1.5 mile stretch.

[beaconben]

Ivan, this is your best TR in a while, very entertaining read. I even learned some new words, but I could not find a definition for cuckolded

[stevetimetravlr]

You should have broke out the big guns! Sounds like a great trip, albeit a painful one... wish I could have gone but I was off gallivanting...

 

 

[ivan]

... definition for cuckolded

means yer bitch done been running around on you while you're we're getting played the fool

[ivan]

 

"does this giant prick make my head look small?"

[stevetimetravlr]

I used to use that line allot in my younger days.

[montypiton]

great trip report! definitely qualifies for the CFCC ("if I told you, you'd have to kill me")