Summary

Description

[Lisa and I spent Thursday night packing and in the kitchen making trail crackers and protein breakfast bars from my backpacking cookbook.]

We left Friday night after work and after a big rain storm came through at home. The weather forecast was a little iffy for the weekend -- chance of rain and thrunderstorms both days -- but we decided to risk it. We got up to Table Rock around midnight. The parking lot was just about full. We humped our stuff up to the camping area, set up our tent and fell asleep pretty quickly.

In the morning, we got up just after sunrise, geared up at the car while we ate protein breakfast bars that we had made at home. We decided to go light, wearing our gear in and only taking a single 60m rope. (Lisa's 9.8mm) When we got around to the east side of Table Rock, we dicided to climb Peek-a-boo. No problem -- we've climbed the first pitch of it a few times before. The difference this time is that we only had one rope, and the rappel down from the top of the first pitch requires either two ropes or a lot of downclimbing, scrambling and general dorking around. We wanted to avoid that.

Previously, when we'd climbed Peek-a-boo, we backed off from doing the second pitch because Lisa didn't feel up to it. She didn't want to try the peek-a-boo move on second with me around the corner and out of sight while wearing a full pack that had a second rope in it. This time, we didn't have the scond rope, and I wore Lisa's second's pack, and she took my Camelbak.

TBD.

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

this weekend was THE BOMB! (that's a good thing. *grin*) we had GORGEOUS weather, and we climbed our rear ends off. one of the routes we climbed [Peek-a-boo] has a very freaky move that i've been afraid of for years - i've backed off it twice before, which has been frustrating for both me and mike. this trip mike set me up so i could work out the moves on it - i took a test fall on it before i started just to prove to my lizard-brain that falling off it wouldn't be the end of the world, and then after some fumbling around... i nailed it.

i've discovered that i climb much better when i sing to myself. it must help me focus... it really made a huge difference over a couple of tough spots. and mike led beautifully all weekend - one of the routes we climbed on sunday [Skip To My Lou] had a REALLY sketchy start that had me singing (and swearing) to myself when i seconded it, and he did an incredible job of leading it. it was basically 20 feet of slab climbing and crappy handholds up to the first bolt, then another 10 feet to the second bolt that was barely any better... and he totally floated the crux move on that route, too.

and, of course, because it was table rock, we had an epic... on saturday, we climbed a route [Peek-a-boo] that the guidebook said would end up on top of table rock [Lightening Ledge, actually], and we could walk off from there. the first two pitches went smoothly, but mike got most of the way up the third pitch and it wasn't at all clear where to top out, plus it was wet up there from the rain friday night... so he ended up down-climbing (on lead!!) most of it, and then i lowered him the last few dozen feet off a fixed pin to a belay station (which was 20 feet above my head; we'd gotten a little off-route on the second pitch, so i was belaying off an anchor he'd built for us). we ended up rappelling down to another belay station [at the top of the second pitch of Jim Dandy] from which we could climb over to lunch ledge, so we did a three-pitch route in 5 pitches (and 6 hours!).

the nice thing about our epics out there is that they always end well, we always learn from them, and on table rock itself there're lots of people to give us advice afterwards on what we should have done. *wry grin*