Summary

Description

Lewis showed up at our house a little after 7am. We hit the road a few minutes later and headed over to Breugger's for per-climb bagels and got on the road westward around 7:45am. Stopped for gas once and arrived at the Stone Parking lot just before 10am. I realized about a third of the way to Stone that the one thing I forgot was my helmet. Lewis said that he was OK with letting me use his, and we could trade it off when/if we swung leads.

Got our gear together and hiked in, getting to the base around 10:30 after a 15-20 minute hike. In the car on the way there, Lewis had mentioned maybe climbing The Pulpit that I'd never been on. Sounded interesting so that's where we headed. There was a group of 3 Scotsmen heading up Entrance Crack.

The Pulpit looked interesting, and I felt like I was up for a 5.8 on-sight lead as a warm up for the day.

Got a bit freaked out at the 2nd bolt of the first pitch. That's the crux of the route, and I was already feeling a bit blown by the time I got there. (That's what I get for not warming up on something easier.) I tried a couple different things, and got a couple feet above the bolt ... and freaked out. My left leg was shaking enough to rattle the gear on my harness. I called down to Lisa that I was about to come off. And then I made a controlled decent back to the stance by grabbing the draw on the bolt as I came off. After resting a while, I tried again. (What other choice did I have?) I found the footholds I needed to use, but I still felt sketchy ... so I grabbed the draw and used it to French-free the move. Made all the difference.

Above that point continued to be challenging, and I was still freaking out (although slightly less than previously) and breathing hard. Eventually got to the next bolt which made me very happy. After that, still hard but not nearly as bad past the 4th bolt and to the anchors. I was very thankful when I finally got there, and my arms and legs were very tired.. Took me about 45 minutes to lead the pitch. It took Lisa about 15-20 minutes (including cleaning) and Lewis 10-15 minutes. All of that was good time for me to rest.

I was happy when Lewis offered to swing the lead. I could have continued leading, but I had no problem with letting him get on the sharp end so I could continue to rest. The resting was good, but after an hour at the semi-hanging belay, my feet were killing me, and I was pleased when I finally got to climb again. (And pleased to find that my feet actually worked.)

Lewis and I swung leads again, and I took pitch 3. Lewis said this was the money pitch (although not the crux) with a step-over across a water groove with running water and then on to the belay at The Oasis. I did well with one exception. Looking at where to cross the running water, I decided that higher looked better with both a nice protrusion for feet and decent hands. The problem is that after I stepped over, I was in an indentation that was about 5' higher than The Oasis. Gah. No good way to get back down except downclimb which I didn't really want to do on slab. But with nothing else available, that's exactly what I did. Luckily, there was a couple of good handholds at the bottom of the depression that made it much easier than it looked like it would be.

Brought Lisa and Lewis up. They both crossed the stream lower than I did. *grin* The space at The Oasis was broad and closer to flat than anything else we'd been on so we decided to stop there for a brief lunch break. (It was around 1:50pm at this point.) It was a gorgeous clear day with temps in the mid-to-upper 50's. Perfect weather to be out on a slab. I had changed out of my heavy fleece shirt at the base into a thermal shirt and a T-shirt (with a lightweight emergency jacket in my Camelback). I chose well and was comfortable in that all day.

Lewis led pitch 4. (Well, the first half.) The pitch headed up and intersected with and crossed the diagonal dikes of Grand Funk Railroad. The one piece of info we missed from the description in the Selected guide is that the pitch goes past the belay anchors in the middle of the route and on up to the flake that is The Pulpit. Lewis wasn't sure if that's what he was supposed to do or if he would have enough rope to link the pitches, so he stopped at the intermediate belay and brought us up. (It was only about 80' of rope up to that GFR belay.) I finished the pitch on up to The Pulpit. (The full pitch is reportedly about 165' so there should have been plenty of rope to string it together.)

From there Lewis led on up to the tree island. There wasn't a fixed anchor so he used a tree. Lisa was happy to get up there since she needed to use the facilities. It was around 4pm, and we decided that we didn't have time to do anything more that rappel back down. We gathered up the ropes, bushwhacked on through the trees, and the headed back out left onto the rock. I gave Lewis and Lisa hip belays down to the anchors at the top of No Alternative, and Lisa belayed me down to join them. (The Scotsmen were just heading down from the top of Great Arch.)

Three rappels got us down to the tree ledge. (We rappelled over to climbers' left so as to not to end up at the top of the first pitch of No Alternative since Lewis has a history of getting ropes stuck there when pulling the rope after rappelling.) Lisa and I simul-rapped to speed things up. One more rappel from the anchors above Entrance Crack got us down to our packs. We got to the ground a little after 5pm. Packed up and hiked out, leaving the climbing area right at the 5:30pm closing time. The hike back to the car was in twilight, but we never had to pull out headlamps. We were packed up and on the road by around 6pm.

We finished the evening with a stop at Foothills Brewery in Winston-Salem on the way home for good food and beer then headed home, getting back to our house around 10pm.