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Friday, 9/23
Lisa couldn't leave early on Friday, and I wanted to maximize my climbing since we were planning to leave early on Sunday so I rode up with Kerry. He came by our house to pick me up, and we got on the road with his Cavalier packed with all of our stuff around 8am. Arrived at the Table Rock parking lot at 11:40am and proceeded to eat lunch and setup our tents.

We hiked in and started climbing Peek-a-boo -- with Kerry leading -- around 1:30pm. Everything was going great. The rain started sometime around 2:15pm, starting as a drizzle and turning into a pouring rain. Kerry was about 60' up and found a good place to build an anchor, and I lowered him off.

We waited out the rain which stopped after about half-an-hour, then we discussed how to retrieve Kerry's gear. I climbed up (on top-rope) to it and decided I didn't like the look of the down climb, but the rock was drying out quickly so I brought Kerry up along with my rack, and then I finished leading the first pitch.

Kerry lead the second pitch -- going on around the corner and getting off route for a while, then coming back and making the correct turn up the face at the obvious vertical crack. The route follows the crack up, then goes right under the corner of the big roof to a set of rap rings.

[I should also mention that as Kerry was finishing up the first pitch, Greg came rappelling down. He and Scott and Lora had climbed the first two pitches of Hidden Crack. Greg got down to the point that there were no more rap rings and not enough rope to get to the ground so Scott and Lora rappelled (from a different set of rings I think) over to where I was belaying Kerry at the top of the first pitch of Peek-a-boo and waited for us to get out of the way before belay Greg up and then all three rappelling down from the Peek-a-boo. I appreciate them waiting for Kerry to finish the second pitch and me to move off the belay before trying to rap down.]

We rapped from the anchors at the top of the second pitch of Peek-a-boo over to the rings on Skip to my Lou (requires two ropes to get there) because (a) there was a group on Jim Dandy that we didn't want to rap on top of, and (b) I had been top by some locals that the rock was sharp right under the Peek-a-boo rings and could cut the rope sheath if not careful. We rapped down from the Skip rings to the ground on double 60m ropes

Dinner was a fun time, hanging out and socializing. I had brought a freeze-dried meal to eat since I didn't have time to throw in anything better, but I was saved from having to choke it down by the offer of homemade chili from Kerry and grilled chicken from Greg. Yum!

Lisa arrived around 9:45pm. And she brought the mini-keg of homebrew that was one of the things we had brought for the pot-luck Saturday night. We broke it out, and the folks there put the hurt on it. At least three-quarters of it went away Friday night. No worries. That's what we brought it for. Barry also had some very tasty bottled homebrew Dunkel that he was sharing.

Saturday, 9/24
I had been thinking that we would climb on Table Rock since I wanted to be back in time for the anchor demo at 6pm, but Lisa convinced me that we should go climb in the Amphitheater. We got a comfortable alpine start of hiking out around 9am. <*grin*> It took half-an-hour to get to the turn down to the Prow off the main trail, then another half-an-hour to get to the base of The Mummy. There was no one on it which made the decision to climb it an easy one. (Plus, it meant we could rap down the Mummy gully and climb the Prow and not have to come down the gawdawful scramble again.)

It took us a little over 3 hours to climb The Mummy. The first pitch is a full 200' rope length. I was a little wigged with the crux section, but even though my heart was racing and my my mouth was dry, I remembered having done it before and finding that there were more holds than there seemed to be so I didn't panic.

I decided not to string the second and third pitches together since the rope drag was getting pretty rough, and that gave Lisa a chance to lead the short third pitch. From the top, it took us about half-an-hour to rappel and scramble back down to the base of The Mummy where we had lunch.

After eating, we headed over to The Prow, taking the arduous route through the center of the scramble rather than the better trail along by the base of The Daddy. Unlike The Mummy which had been in the shade, The Prow was in the sun. Lisa was interested in leading some more so we swung leads for the first four pitches with me starting off.

I ran out of water at the top of the third pitch. (We agreed later that we should have cached more water at the top of trail to the The Prow.)

I'm still not sure what the canonical way of breaking up the pitches is on The Prow. This time, we did it in 6 pitches. I think maybe the last two or three of how we did it could somehow be combined into only two pitches, but I'm not exactly sure how. Anyway, doesn't really matter. Kai, Dave, and Jon caught up with us at the top of the fourth pitch and were on our heels as we finished up. I was pretty tired leading the final vertical wall and did my impression of a flounder getting over the top.

The hike out was miserable. We were both very tired and out of water.

Got back to the parking lot around 6:45pm and caught the tail-end of the anchors demo by Ryan of Rock Dimensions before heading to the picnic area and getting started with the feeding and socializing. The pot-luck was a little late (according to my hungry stomach) getting started, but it was really, really good. Lots of good food to share, and a ton of people packed in and milling around a couple of tables.

Chris and Austin -- whom Lisa and I had met a few years ago at Moore's and then Table Rock -- stopped by. Chris is getting married in a couple weeks and was up there for a bachelor party. It was good to see them again, and they enjoyed the social atmosphere.

Finally headed off to bed around 10pm after a quick stop by the car to use a camp towel and water to wipe some of the day's grime off. By that point it was pretty foggy out which was good since I stripped down next to the car to wash off.

By the time I go to the tent, it was just starting to drizzle. Didn't bode well for climbing in the morning before taking off.

Sunday, 9/25
Woke up to the sound of rain. It sounded a little worse in the tent than it really was since we were also getting dripped on from the trees, but it was rainy and foggy. Definitely not weather that's conducive to climbing.

Everyone packed up, milled around the parking lot for a bit, and eventually got on the road.

A bit of an anticlimactic ending to the trip, but that's how it goes, and it didn't diminish all the fun from the previous two days.