Summary

Description

Timing of getting up to Table Rock parking lot and hiking out to setup the tent on the top of the Prow:

~11:20pm  started hiking out
~11:55pm  remembered that I forgot the guide book  (we were just past the Chimneys)
~12:40am  Lisa left her pack and went back to the car for it
~12:50am  Lisa rested after the hike to the car and back
 ~1:00am  at the trail down to the Prow
 ~1:15am  at the top of the Prow
 ~2:00am  tent setup

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

this weekend KICKED BUTT. we spent saturday in linville gorge, then capped it off on table rock sunday. we climbed over 1000 rope-feet of routes, hiked AT LEAST 6 miles (and probably more, since i'm not counting the approach to table rock on sunday), did two new routes in the gorge that we've never done before... generally had an excellent time.

we decided to drive up friday night and then hike out to the gorge on arrival, carrying our climbing gear, camping gear, and breakfast/lunch for saturday... it didn't seem like such a brilliant idea at 12:45 as we were finishing up the 2-mile hike in with all our stuff, but it was WELL worth it the next morning when we woke up on the rim of the gorge, ready to eat, gear up, and jump on the wall.

saturday was a HUGE day - we climbing the mummy buttress (two 200-foot pitches, 5.5/5.6), which is a classic moderate route out there, and finished up so early that we decided to rap down and jump on the prow (a classic easy route out there - 4 pitches, ~300 feet total, 5.3/5.4) - which meant we topped out about 20 feet below our tent. it just doesn't get much better than that. :)

we hiked out saturday evening (being motivated by having left our dinner in the car!) and got a good night's sleep, then finished off the weekend on table rock. we went up the cave route (5.5, 2 pitches) to lunch ledge, then went up a MARVELOUS single-pitch, 100-foot route called the block route - named for a massive block creating a humongous corner that you have to climb through. i've gotten up it a couple times in the past, but it was a definite struggle - this time i floated it. (of course, i did have the advantage of watching what mike did as he led it, and he made it look so easy that i just used all his moves... *grin*)

we rapped off the block route, walked off lunch ledge, threw all our gear in the car, and topped off the day with an EXCELLENT dinner at the longhorn steakhouse in hickory. if you're ever in hickory, i recommend it - we discovered it by accident coming home from a previous table rock trip, and it's probably the best of the steakhouse-style restaurants that i've found in this area.

so, all in all, a marvelous weekend. just what i was hoping to have for my last climbing weekend in quite some time - work is about to eat all my weekends with the datacenter move, so we wanted to pack enough into this one to tide me over until november.