GroupWBench

 I've always been interested in climbing on the face of Table Rock that overlooks the parking area. Beyond the obvious advantage of being close to the parking and therefore easier to get to than some of the other climbs at Table Rock and Linville Gorge, I see those climbs every time I go there.

Ivy and Tom and I went up to TR to get on Crackerjack. A two pitch climb following a huge crack line up the face over the parking lot. The first time I climbed there, Guy Jacobson pointed it out to me as a really great climb. In retrospect, it may have been a climb he really wanted to do and was trying to build the desire for it in me early in my climbing career.

As it turns out, the first pitch has a very sketchy boulder problem start, followed by twenty-five feet of run out. After that there are a couple of balancy moves high over the last piece of protection. Finally, there is an obvious belay under the big roof that is not the place for the belay. I'm happy to say that Tom led that mess. Here he is twenty feet or so up trying hard to place some protection.

 

 

 

Ivy followed Tom to the false belay and then lowered down. She climbed very strongly and moved through the whole thing very cleanly.

 

 

 

 

 

When Ivy came down, I climbed up to Tom. We had managed to only bring one rope with us so Ivy was going to wait and try to get some pictures from the parking lot of us on the second pitch.

In addition to only bringing the one rope on this auspicious day, I managed to bring two right climbing shoes and no left ones. Yes, I felt pretty dumb. Fortunately, I had my vibram hiking shoes with me. I decided to climb with my left foot in a hiking shoe. It never slipped and I only had a little trouble feeling the rock with it, but I never felt confident in it at all. That colored my whole day.

 

 

 

Once I got up to Tom, We realized that we had to move the belay up and around the roof. That proved to be a minor wrestling match with the rock.

Then Tom started up the big crack. He navigated the mudslide at the base of the crack and stepped up into a flaring off-width monster. He grunted and slithered up until he got on top of a big chock stone about 35 feet from the top. Looking up from there, he could not see any protection through the last 25 feet of the climb. We talked it over and chose prudence over recklessness and rapped off.

The descent proved to be pretty tricky. We  had to get back up under the big roof to set the second rappel. The rope was at a sharp angle around the roof and we couldn't pull it down, so I had to lower Tom part way for him to pull the rope. By then, I just wanted off the rock. Below is a picture of Tom starting up the second pitch.

 

 

Once we were down, Tom very much wanted to successfully climb something for the day. We went around the back side and he and Ivy climbed the first three pitches of Jim Dandy while I ran around to the big ledge above them. Here they are on Jim Dandy.

We all climbed the last pitch up and scrambled over the top of Table Rock for the hike home. Not a great day of climbing, but a nice day out in the mountains. It is funny to think that Guy's plan to sandbag me on Crackerjack was a fifteen year time bomb.