Mt Redoubt - Dodging Da Po-Po on Da Depot 6/25/2008
Trip: Mt Redoubt - Dodging Da Po-Po on Da Depot
Date: 6/25/2008
Trip Report:Dodging Da Po-Po on Da Depot
The augors read poorly – amerikkkan official vehicles at the canuckistan trail head, deep in enemy territory on depot creek – were we being watched? Could they hear?!? Who needs a police state when the natural state of things is a road as wretched as this? – sapling thickets everywhere stretching over and against and across and into – 2 miles “bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge” – safety check at the border, tin-foil helmets ON – advice for the depot creek trail: stay on the FUCKING trail! do not, we beseech you, we implore you, cross the creek on a lark unless the devils club is your true scepter and mistress huckleberry your domina
The reward for our first few hours of labor
A swift kick in the nuts later we emerge into alpine snowy/swampy goodness to see mt redoubt
We wander across a broken and barren flood-plain to find pimp-station #1 nestled amongst the blocks and slag of the seasonally slicing torrents
Joshk in full uniform and featuring his highly developed game-face, proudly on parade on the depot
The author surrounded by the distractions of civilization too dear to be left behind – note the serious shellacking to which the vital vino has already submitted
Clouds came and went the night as we spent the intertwining hours in the “riots, banquets and sports” which those who are addicted in the vain courses of eternal youth do in order that they may, by them, become The Bard's circumspect, unlettered, rude and sallow companions– in the morning it was up and bacon and fruit-bits and cigarettes and moving over the vast and flat expanse of the redoubt glacier – the mathematical perfection of every snow line and the untrammeled majesty of the surreal scene was pronounced, but off set perhaps by the perceptible degree to which the predicted sunny weather was dematerializing
Wisps of mist streaking over the angelic-upper pitches of redoubts ne face – I can see why this jewel must be so sought after
At the col, we beheld the folly of the forecaster - woe from the west! Bear bedraggled and bedrenched!
“I too am untranslatable…I sound my barbaric yawp from the rooftops of the world!”
Start epic…now.
A week and another long trip later, what the gap in the extant pictures indicates to my quailing memory is clear – quotes, merely snippets, and priceless ones, you must furnish he image to fit – “why is it so much more goddamn cold/dark/windy/icy on the SOUTH side of this mountain?” - “‘redoubt’ means fortress” – “rock!” – “why did I bring aluminum crampons again?” – “did you get this rope at toys’r’us?” – an exchange: “you want me to throw down the rope? I think I could hold you over the other side” “uhh, I dunno. How hard were those first moves?” “um, well, they weren’t too hard, but if you fall here, you will die” “throw it down!”:)
Nervous memories – rain – wind – hail – fog and rending fog – rappelling on a joke rope, maybe 15 meters long? - rappelling off a loose block with a nut in a piece of tat I salvaged higher up and our only gear! – big long slide into the whiteness and the end of earth waiting there if’n it pops
In the end we persevere and count it climbed – backtracking on our foot-track across the now ping-pong rendered depot glacier, the clouds begin to break as we turn the bench and begin descending towards lake ouzel
Hanging snow glaciers over the lake
Blocks awaiting the Great Reduction
At camp Scotland came for a visit and brought the Moors with him, but damn it, where’s the whiskey with the wine gone?
There is but one remedy when a man’s soul and spirit has become a damp and drizzling November
The bluebird arrived a day later then the goat entrails portended
Redout’s ne face is a clarion call
In the end, like everything, it meant nothing and everything – we saw god – really, no shit – he’s from Serbia, he hides out on the chilliwack river road – we saw him, josh and me – no shit, you can google it – there he was, we’d pulled over to retch and puke and drink some more after the gut-pounding first 3 miles of road back down – stopped beside us, the first person we’d seen in days – he drove a mini-van w/ a jesus-fish on the back – he had a Molotov cocktail in an mgd bottle and a scaling knife – he introduced himself but we didn’t understand his name – he needed food – he needed money for fuel – he offered us a leather jacket for 10$ - he settled for 2 american spirits – stories of Kentucky, of jail, of the pope and jews and authorities out to get him – “are you in the army?”– a great big box’o’wine smile on my face and the other on my prison-shank – the cloud of dust as we gave up on salvation and settled for being merely ordinary men
