Summary

Description

Lisa wanted to lead Jim Dandy, but there was a group of three just starting on it so I led Peek-a-boo instead. The first pitch was long -- almost a full 200' from where we started. It took about an hour and a half for me and Lisa to both get to the top. After looking at it for a while, I thought I could probably lead the peek-a-boo move to start the next pitch. Lisa looked at it (and actually tried it a little bit while I belayed her over to it) and decided she might not be able to do it with a rope bag on her back so we decided to back off and rap back down to the base.

While getting the second rope out of the rope bag to rappel down, the rope started slithering over the edge. Lisa and I both saw it going; I thought it would be OK since the rope was tied into the rope bag tarp and the rope back was clipped in. When the weight of the rope pulled on the knot, the knot in the loop of the rope bag tarp untied itself and *poof* the rope was gone. Watching the knot untie was like something you read about but never expect to actually see happen. The rope fell down into some bushes in the gully/crack about 40' below us. I belayed/lowered Lisa down to it, and she climbed back up with it clipped to her harness. We rappeled down with no further problems.

After we got down, we had lunch of PBJ and squished bread. It was a beautiful day. Lisa then led all three pitches of Jim Dandy (about 250' or so). It was about 4pm when we got to Lunch Ledge, so we decided to go ahead and climb the top pitch of the Cave Route (a.k.a. The Block Route). I led it and had a lot of fun. (Not nearly as hard as the time I climbed it almost two years before on my first trip climbing outdoors.) A guy led up right behind Lisa, which I thought was pretty annoying since were were going to rap back down to Lunch Ledge, but the rap took us to the left of the route line, and we were able to rap down while the second guy climbed.

We rappeled off the rap rings at the top of the second pitch of Jim Dandy. Both the rappel off The Cave Route to Lunch Ledge and then to the rings on Jim Dandy took only one rope. We got out the second rope -- being extra careful to make sure it was tied in -- and proceeded to rap all the way to the ground. We made it back to the parking lot before it was dark. I had brought up a beer (for me) and a cider (for Lisa) on ice in a small cooler. They were still cold and tasted great!

We had started smelling smoke around the time we were on Lunch Ledge, and someone up there told us it was a forest fire in the gorge. There were even a few little bits of ash falling on us while we rappeled down. It had been very odd. After we setup camp and had dinner, we decided to hike out to the gorge overlook and take a look at the fire before hitting the sack. It was awesome ... and a bit scary. It was far up the gorge from us, but we could still see the flames and the smoke. The line of fire went from about the middle of the gorge up to one of the ridges. At one point the flames flared up, and the smoke was back-lit with a orange glow and looked like the mouth of Hell. Lisa and I talked about whether we should stay and camp, sleep in the car or head back to Morganton. We decided to stay and camp, assuming that it was a popular enough area that we would be warned if we were in danger. We made it through the night, and the fire didn't appear to be much closer on Sunday.

Sunday after breakfast and breaking camp, we scouted down into the gorge to make sure we had good approach beta for coming back and climbing The Daddy sometime. We also scouted Good Heavens and The Mummy. It was a tough hike in and out, but I'm glad we did it, and I definitely feel better about going to climb those sometime in the future. It was also incredibly beautiful with all the colored leaves on the trees. (The colored leaves on the ground were pretty, too, but they made the scrambling over rocks a bit more difficult.)

After we got back to the parking lot and were about to leave, a van from the Outward Bound school arrived, and a group started taking out a back board/stretcher. We asked what was going on and were told that someone fell from Helmet Buttress, and they were going to bring them out. They didn't know how bad a fall it was. We offered to help, but they had enough people and declined. We decided to head on home rather than stand around and wait to gawk. I hope whoever it was ended up being OK.

The colors up on the mountain and the views from the routes were incredible. I thought I had missed the Fall colors this year, but even though we might not have been up there at the peak, it was beautiful. The weather was awesome, too.

Table Rock notes

• take a light rack for the top/third pitch of Jim Dandy
  (there's 1 nasty, rusty bolt right at the belay rings and only 1 other one mid-way up to protect 100' of easy climbing)

Approach beta for The Mummy, The Daddy, Good Heavens

Hiking out from parking lot:

• took about 30 min. to hike from the parking lot to the turn down to the Prow (at the white rock in the path)
• about 10 min. from the turn down to the top of the Prow

Descent gully:

• about 30-40 minutes down descent gully to The Daddy
• can cut left at the spot where the amphitheater opens up to the left (at the 20' cliff where I can reach the handhold and Lisa can't and where you can see the 3rd class gully is next to The Mummy); this leads right to the base of The Mummy
• can get to The Daddy from The Mummy by following the trail along the base of the wall (on the left side of the gully) rather than going back out to the middle of the gully and then cutting back in to the left later
• the base of The Daddy is at a crufty crack with a small buttress sticking out; there are also 3 pine trees in a triangle and a downed pine, slightly hollowed out lengthwise
• if you stay to the middle of the descent gully rather than cutting left when the amphitheater opens up to the left:
  • cut left onto trail closer to left wall before triple-Y tree (just before end of right wall)
  • not very far -- 100 yards? -- from where you cut over from the middle to the left trail
• to continue on to Good Heavens:
  • not an obvious trail below The Dadddy
  • follow wall down and around through the rhodo to the base at the obvious dihedral that leads up to a big roof
• about 1:20 to hike out from The Daddy back to the parking lot (35 minutes to get up the descent gully and another 45 minutes from the Prow back to the parking lot)