Summary

Description

Lisa and I drove out to Table Rock after work Thursday night, getting up there around 11:30pm. Pitched our tent and camped near the parking lot. Got up Friday morning, had breakfast, geared up and hiked out to the base of The Daddy in the Amphitheater in Linville Gorge. It took about 1:20 to hike out there, half of which was scrambling down into the Gorge. We should have left earlier than we did, but I'll get to that in a minute. We got to the base of The Daddy around noon and started climbing around 1pm. The climbing was incredible! Great rock. Great view. Five pitches of fairly easy climbing (5.5 to 5.6). I led the whole thing, stringing a couple of the pitches together to try to save time. It ended up that the sun set just after 5pm while we were at the top of the 4th pitch. I led the last, short pitch in the twilight, and Lisa seconded it as it was getting dark. Then we had to hike out. We had never been on the trail on top of the Mummy Buttress before, but we knew more or less which direction we needed to go in. The problem is, there's impenetrable rhododendron thickets in the woods up there. We ran into a couple of them. :\ It took us almost 3 frustrating, tiring hours to hike up and off the Mummy Buttress back to a trail we recognized. Then we had another 1-2 hours of hiking to get back to the parking lot. We got back to the car just after 11pm, sat down and had some hot chocolate before we fell into the tent to sleep like the dead.

All-in-all, it was quite an adventure, and the climbing was tremendous. The weather was perfect for it. We learned a few things, and the next time we try it, we'll try to make it a little less of an adventure. :)

[The following is Lisa's account of the trip from an e-mail she sent ...]

well, we had a bit of an epic. *wry grin* (one of these days, i'm going to climb that damn route and NOT have an epic - this is the same route on which dave & i got caught in a thunderstorm the first time i climbed it; he strung the last 2 pitches together and topped out before the rain started, but i ended up climbing about 150 feet of 5.9 covered with wet lichen. suffice it to say, it was interesting - in the ancient chinese sense.)

the daddy is a 5-pitch route, mostly 5.5 (very easy) climbing with a few 5.6 (still easy, but a little more challenging) areas. we had scouted the approach and found the base - always challenging in linville gorge - on a previous trip, and we were planning to climb up and then hike out around the rim of the gorge, back to the main trail. when i climbed it before, dave and i rappelled down and went back up the scramble, so i'd never done the hike out around the rim. but we had good information from the net about how to find the trail...

anyway. we drove out thursday night - left around 8, got up there around midnight, and camped in one of the spaces near the parking lot. we got up around 8:30 the next morning, had breakfast, organized all our gear, and around 10:30 we started the hike out. we were getting off a little later than we'd intended, which was a concern since sunset was at 5:30...

it's about 2 miles out to the rim of the gorge, then a 500-foot scramble down through tumbled rocks and various trees & rhododendron to the base of the route. i was carrying a full pack (rope, lunch, 2 liters of water, and a bunch of gear), and my legs were starting to give me some trouble on the scramble down... but we got to the base of the route and got our packs rearranged. i was going to carry the lunch, 2 water bottles, climbing guide, medkit, and our hiking boots in my pack, and trail a rope (which we shouldn't need, but were taking for safety's sake); mike had a camelbak (little hydration pack) with 2 liters of water, and his rack.

mike started up the first pitch around 1:15 - we were pushing it for time, but we figured we'd at least top out before sunset and then hike out in the dark. i started up the first pitch, wearing my pack and trailing my rope, and immediately knew i wasn't going to make it up the whole route like that... i almost fell twice on what should have been easy climbing. i had "sewing-machine" legs - something i wouldn't expect to get until the last pitch of a route like this.

i got up to the belay ledge at the top of the first pitch, and mike & i talked about what to do. we decided to keep going; he was feeling strong, so we switched packs, and he led with the big pack while i seconded with just the camelbak and my trailing rope. we had headlamps and warm clothes, so we knew we would be fine climbing out in the dark if need be. without the pack, i was okay to climb... so we lost some time working that out, but we were sticking to it.

mike strung the second and third pitches together - we had a long enough rope, and it saved the time of setting up another anchor and trading off belays again. the top of the third pitch is a ledge big enough to party on - we had a bite to eat (altho not a full lunch, to save time), and we both rigged up our headlamps, since the next belay was a hanging belay and would be less convenient for rearranging gear.

by this time it was about 4:30, and we were racing the sun. mike headed up the fourth pitch, set the anchor for the hanging belay, and i started u it just as the sunset was getting impressive. i made it to the belay just as the sun slipped over the opposite edge of the gorge... mike climbed up the last pitch in twilight, with his headlamp, and by the time i started up it was full-on dark. i joined him at the top around 6:30, and we finally had our lunch. :)

we were thinking our adventure was pretty much over, but it was really just beginning... we still had to hike out. *wry grin*

by the time we'd eaten, rested, dealt with rope management, and gotten our boots back on, it was around 7:30. we started looking for the trail around the top of the gorge, back to the main hiking trail, but it was a total rhododendron jungle. to top it off, there'd been a forest fire sometime in the past few months and all the trees were covered with an outer layer of char, so every time we touched something, we got soot all over us. my legs were giving me some pretty serious trouble, too.

we hacked around in the rhodo for about an hour - at one point, we were following a sort of path upward at the very edge of the cliff, but mike was concerned about being so close to the edge, so we headed back into the jungle. we spent about an hour fruitlessly hacking around - we knew what direction we needed to go in, but every time we tried to go that way, we found our way blocked by trees or huge boulders / mini-cliffs. it was compounded by the nature of the rhodo - we'd see something that looked like a trail, follow it for a hundred yards or so, and it'd trail off into a bramble or dead-end at a rock.

i finally just flat couldn't wallk anymore, and had to sit down - i was so blown that i was seriously considering just sleeping out there, since i didn't think i could get through any more useless rhodo-hacking. so we rested for a little while, pulled out the info we had, and tried to piece together what to do next. it turned out that we had needed to stay on the cliff-edge trail all along... so we ended up hiking out along this minimal goat-trail, at the very edge of a 400-foot drop-off, in the dark. *wry grin* we were probably safe enough the whole way, but it was a little nerve-wracking.

we finally got to the main trail a little after 10, and we finished the 2-mile hike back to the parking lot around 11:15. my legs were absolutely killing me. mike made me some hot chocolate, and we fell into our sleeping bags and passed out. my legs were so sore that i kept waking myself up all night; every time i shifted position in my sleep, it hurt so much that it woke me up.

saturday we slept in - it was a little chillier, and very breezy. we DEFINITELY picked the right day to climb, weather-wise. :) neither one of us was up to another day of climbing; mike bouldered a little while i spotted for him, and then we packed up our gear and headed home. my legs stiffened up in the car on the way home, and by the time we got to the house, i was so stiff i couldn't climb the two steps up to the kitchen door without mike's help...

so we spent saturday afternoon and most of sunday unpacking & recovering. i have some GREAT pictures of the trip - i'll send you a pointer to them once i get them online. overall, it was a great adventure, and i'm really glad we went - but next time, i'm definitely not going to try to do it all in one day. *wry grin*

(when dave & i went before, we did a full weekend - drove out friday evening and hiked out that evening to the gorge, set up our tent on the edge of the gorge, and then saturday all we had to do was scramble down, climb up, rappel down, and scramble up & out. we camped on the lip of the gorge again saturday night, and then hiked back out to the parking lot sunday morning and drove home sunday afternoon. i definitely think that's the better way to do it - not only does it spread out the effort, but camping at the edge of the gorge is just absolutely amazing...)