[TR] Drachenschweif - Gerber/Sink NordMordWand 8/10/2012

[ivan]

Trip: Drachenschweif - Gerber/Sink NordMordWand

 

Date: 8/10/2012

 

Trip Report:

august on the wing and waning, woefully - me worked-fuck 'fore too long i fear - week at the beach on the books since ever-fuck, how to squeeze out a measure of adventure from this parched and parting summer? wrangled the neo-jesus adam da phuzzy into a hip-shot of a plan, left in ruin after the bailout of the ever reliable joshk and others-such - to leavenworth, a fair burg i've not had the pleasure of in a strangely long time it seems

 

saw some ole'boys scaling the gerber-sink on dragontail a few winters back - pat then in the death-grip of a non-particular flu, me feet afreezing on a solotrip up the n butt coulior of colchuck - ensuing cc.retard conversation brought out it 'twas a summer route as well, and so was the seed of my thought, set since everfuck afore

 

purty route, like a purty mouth, and like that too, more fearsome once it's wrapped around yer wondrous johnson - starts at pretty much the lowest point on the massif - i like the mike layton concept of rating routes, seems i learned it awhile ago - all routes start w/ negative 3 stars - in this scheme, the gerber-sink (aptly named, as baby-sized particles seem to drain down it constantly) rates a mere zero stars, w/ a 1+ stars if you instead finish via the fin (as we did) - probably kewler in winter, in summer everything's frosted in fuck-crazy glacial-flour - easy, sure, but disconcerting when every hold and slab foot-placement feels as tenuous as if shrouded in talc -we stayed roped far more than would normally feel right, but it was hard, once in the meat, to give up security in so slippery a medium

busted up from pdx lickety-split n' approached in the dying of the day, beer-sodden and cigarette o'ersoaked - atop the talus, we rested a spell and numbered the passing perseid showers, all stretched out w/ tails headed away from the dragon - cygnus honking and hollering and emigrating all through the milky effluence

a cascade lake at cusp of day

a golfer suiting up for a goat-fucker of an adventure

a short approach, fo'shizzle

we intended to solo as high as possible, but, easy as it all was, the fact that every rounded hold was covered in talc and grit made it hardly seem like a breeze

careful there boy-o

soon enough we were in rambly ground, but a few spots of silliness made a rope seem saner, and so we wandered up the wonky, sandy way, sticking where easiest where possible, yet never quite getting that business-casual stoke, the thunker hand in solid stone and crack coquettishness a baller gets when he's into his mountain medicine fierce and fiery

still on the lower third

shitty view, no?

the crux of our slippery biscuit - we paused for a laugh n' a butt, but soon enough it was inevitable we'd have to cluster-fuck our way up it - how awesome was it that it was adam's pitch? a short chimney, 5.7 sure i suppose, but jesus-fuck, mean as a las vegas lady just shy of sun-up - flaring, floury, rotten as fuck in back - i only followed it by funneling the power of chairman-mao thought strait through my heart-chakra

continuing above that chimney, i set a belay on an assful of gravel w/ a joke of an anchor i'm sure and brought the white-boy on up

i'd a shit-eating grin writ-large on my silly face - my last pitch had set me just below yet another grim looking bit of wideness - luckily adam could scramble up and right of it

we pulled above that and emerged into the mother of all grisly hanging-gravel piles - looking up we could see the fin and it seemed only common sense to make a bee line over to the backbone (right where the ridge joins as right) and finish on solid stone

my back was pounding and sad-sore by the time fate shat us out at the base of the fin - though i'd done it once before i fucked it all up good n' proper, going way too far right along the easy ledges till i was just below the right-most block on the summit ridge - settled to do a fuck-all-stupid gearless traverse back onto ledges along the face, set a scrappy anchor, then went up left towards the leftmost block - maybe i shoulda continued that way, but a demon-simple beautiful double slanting crack led me back right to a siren-song of a hand crack, which left me here to bring up the baggage-boy

no shitty piece of prime-rib i'd left this supplicant - i'd stop where i'd run out of rope, and was kinda-sorta-mostly sure there was a reasonable crack to get him up to the rightmost notch of the fin, from whence i remembered it was easy ground to the summit - in the end, old'boy whooped and waled and had himself a holler-fuck - just below the notch the crack fuckered off, and he figured out on the spot the intricate mechanics of the pendulum, swinging over into the regular route to finish - fun to follow!

my damn near decade old memory failed me and it wasn't as simple a waltz in a girdle-skirt as i'd sussed it from their to the slum-it, so after another pitch, the hardy-old phuzzy got a last little bit of fun to Bring It All Home

cool guys eschew slum-it shots, so we skedaddled on down the snowfield, sticking towards the rocks in honor of the running-shoe clad among us - hilarious hijinx of snow-melt sipping n' clifftop down-cavorting ensued, which ultimately had us at asgard and with only a single smoke to stretch the distance between there n' home

in valahlla along the shores of our vernal, shaded lake, the phuzz absented-thee-from-felicty-awhile to evaluate the nocturnal, cliff-ed out descent we'd found - i can't help but agree

gin - juice - bacon - grits - the shins and shits n' giggles - an interstate across the boulders - camels and brain-cheese - gut laughs and the kiss of the gentle breeze

"then we ate mescaline and went swimming..."

our trip WAS different - a half-bottle of gin each and staggering in the sun, our camels cashed we headed on down - dalliances w/ a darling of a lady ranger - her exact words something like "i think yer full of it" for fuck's sake - channeling laurence of arabia - "my fears are my own concern" - the dusty road - the heat of day - the distant reach - naps and the roar of time in passing - portland at the dying of the day - puffs n' parting - a glass of wine w/ the wife and another gallivant safe in the bag!

 

Gear Notes:

skinny 50 meter rope

single set of nuts

double set of cams, blue tcu to camelots #2, single #3, 4

couple double runners for slinging bullshit

light axe for the descent

[stevetimetravlr]

That last photo could be a Hamms beer commercial. From the land of sky blue waters...nice send.

[denalidave]

Nice send.

 

I see you ran into the same Ms Ranger that shut us down last week. She noted my bag of food and said "that's way too much food for a day trip". I'd just grabbed the bag and threw it in my pack at the car with about 5 days worth of candy in it.

 

"That's just how I roll", was my reply. Still waiting for the promised ticket to show up in the mail, even though we NEVER did bivy and went out that day.

[Pete_H]

Sadisticish

[Off_White]

I didn't recall the same grit and flour conditions you encountered back when I did that route, though since we were wearing mountain boots perhaps we just didn't notice - grit feels far scarier in rock shoes. I do recall that chimney quite well, as it was running with water at the time.

 

We did a finish following that ledge at the base of the fin all the way up and right, around a rib or two, and up and right to the summit. I think that's the finish from the old Hidden Couloir north face route.

 

I thought it was a great route, sorry to hear its in less than stellar condition these days.

 

 

[mountainsloth]

seems like a shit choice considering all the pristine routes to choose from out there but sounds like you had fun so I guess that is all that matters. Good on ya!