Check your inventory for extra rope, gold or alcohol; stuff may be hidden under other objects, like the portable bed or a chest, which is interfering. Check that you didn't have any rope in your inventory which stacked with the 4 you just picked up (they should be 2 separate pieces of rope, and 2 in one stack). It shouldn't make any difference if Rimmer's ale was from the reward or purchased.
Without detailed instructions, it would be virtually impossible to discover the mechanism to teleport into the easter egg area. A couple people have methodically used Wizard's Sight, etc to clear all the fog of war, and could have discovered the area across the mountains on their own, but would have needed to toss a teleporter stone up onto the mountain and repeated to get across. I did this the other way around to get out of the easter egg area, but never tried to see if I could get a teleporter stone onto the mountain from the forest side.
