Trip Report: you must forgive the ecstatic jabbering that follows, especially given that we fucked up and failed to bring a proper camera to capture the magic, a fault i shall seek to mitigate w/ the copious use of many fine swearwords - a fine, fine local creep was just completed by your friend and humble narrator - being a creature of the north cascades i've never sampled the great walls of the golden fruity-cali-booy south, but curious i've been to see what that whole scene was like - lately my friend miker had come by a pimped out double portaledge and was looking for someplace to make mischief w/ it - years ago i remember tooling along w/ joeH on his anchor swapping shindig and rapping down through ground zero - he pointed out the sweet setup for practicing the big wall hanging bivy as there is an excellent 4 bolts anchor about 160 feet off the ground
so the plan went into action - mike's set to have his second gimp-child born tomorow or soon, soon thereafter, so equipped w/ a new cell phone (see our sordid stuart debacle for the backstory), he and i zoomed outta camas aroudn 4 y-day and were on the scene and ready to roll about 530 - we circumvented the parks newfangled fuckall scheme to charge 10$ for overnighting on the rock by parking 50 yards down the road in the old-school misanthrope p-lot - humped our ledge and a huge party supply down to the south side and set to work
the start to ground zero is damned confusing if you're just reading the prg and i dont' know that i can do much to improve on it other than to say that, after commiting a great hate-crime against the myriad of luscious ferns, trees, shrubs and purty, purty flowers that were encamped in the 300 some odd feet of cracks for likely the past 2 years or more, the line is much more obvious now when standing at the base then it was previously- the bluebook line on the route reads .11d, grade III, which i reckon is right on - i regretably am damn far from having that in my free-dar, but armed w/ many small wires and a pair of etriers and a daring do to free what i could and aid-fuck the rest, i managed both pitches in the fine style all who have had the misfortune to meet me have come to expect
the first pitch is the blue-collar fright-fest - crazy lichen-ated, thiiiiiiin cracks w/ only a few thousand year pins along the way, unstrait-forward route finding, blah, blah, blah, 2 hours later i was at the sweet hanging belay and attempting to transform the image of the pig-hauling setup so androgously illustrated in FOTH into reality but without the high-speed jumars that the jet-set crowd is all equipped with - using a pulley and 2 prusiks and my etriers i was able to figure out how to hoist the 60 some odd pound pig up to my perch -being a phat-ass phuck has its advantages - i can see how doing a true big wall expedition would be epic to the extreme
after mike arrived at our lofty crib, we deployed our wonder of aluminium science and set into the 120 ozs of whiskey and fosters ("it's australian for budweiser!") and other assorted party-favorites we dragged along and quickly became rudely deranged whilst sorting out our strange situation - ropes everywhere - gear everywhere - biner on biner on biner! brought a z-rest for some obscure reason and had zero use for it - the 'ledge was the coziest bivy i've had all summer
scenes of the night - shooting stars - satellites - boats on the river - the sperm-spluge of the milky way - a wailing set of mp3 speakers blaring out the tunes that meter my mercurial soul - "navigator, navigator, awake and be strong - the mornign is here and there's work to be done!" - "she's addicted to nicotein patches, she's afraid of a light in the dark" - "by landslide and rockblast they were buried so deep, that in death if not life they'll have peace when they sleep" - arcing lines of piss cascading down the rock - spotlights - like climbing into a sedate aviary - swallows all aroudn swooping and swirling, bug-bound and playful - bats - owls - moths - camel after camel after camel and then the whiskey's gone!
light at 430 - the crescent moon glows in the east - mike is forced to rap to the ground and settle a certain gastro-intestinal necessity while i unfuck the ropes and sort gear - i try to hide my glee at getting to lead the money, money pitch - goddam, how did this only get 1 fucking olson star? - in the state it was in, covering in powder-green lichen and completly vegetable infested my puny man-boy free skills kept me from freeing more than maybe 10% of the pitch - steeeeep! i was the proverbial pimp on xmas morning, unwrapping a present every 3 feet, covering my eyes w/ my elbows while tearing out whole ecosystems of ferns and other fragile things - found an acorn lodged in a crack, awaiting the Great Leveling - "thanks santa, just what i wanted, a nut placement!"
and then of course the song that just wouldn't go away, the one i belted out endlessly like some loon - starstruck - "i wanna be a rawkstar!"
"'cuz we all just wanna be big rockstars, live in l.a. mansions, driving 15 cars, the girls come easy and the drugs come cheap, we'll all stay skinny 'cuz we just won't eat!"
mike's wife was all set to get her bun out of the oven by watchign some fancy chic-flic at noon 2day, and so we had to high-tail it outta there w/o climbing riverside like i woulda liked, but no worries as the rain began very shortly after we broke down the ledge and rapped down - a big hearty "fuck you" to the jackasses who brought the meth-addled pitbull to the base of the crag and left him to growl and bark and chase us down the trail - luckily i had a portledge in hand to plunge into his skull had he come 4 feet closer to my happy bubble -totally harshed on my buzz - do you fucknuts who bring your dogs to the crag understand that mean assholes like me will kill them? yeah, so your puppy might be real sweet when you're around, but when you leave them to blockade the sole exit from the crag, freaked out at the rockfall and isolation, you create a situation where something is gonna get hurt, and it sure ain't gonna be me - if i had had a gun, little fido would probably be dead now, and you too if you had pitched a fit over it - anyway, back to the light and frothy tale i'm laying down so subtle
hmm, fuck, well, that was that - all you so called portlandia hardmen now have had a neglected classic cleaned for you to go free and chest-beat over and its everybit as damned good as driving 6 hrs to go do CBR - the placements are all clean and the flowers all fucked - i'd be happy to belay you while you freelead it and i'll see what i can do on tr!
Gear Notes: a set of tiny nuts 00 metolious cam a must X2 blue, green and yellow aliens X2 sets of small, medium and large nuts X2 .5 to 2 inch cams 1 3 inch cam 16 or so draws
and for the pimped out portaledge experience you will need: 1 can of bbq pringles 2 giant subway gut-bomb sammies 1 sack of cheetos X4 fosters oil cans .5 liters of makers mark 1 pack of crumpled camels a whole headful of to make the shooting stars seem more personal
Approach Notes: park in the olde spot to escape the warden's ticket
to make the shooting stars seem more personal 