Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Climbing at Table Rock

Climb was on 04/24/2009

This is a belated post. We did this climb a couple weeks ago. I just wanted to post some pictures and give a report. My brother-in-law Russ has been trying to get me to climb at table rock for some time now. I was happy we finaly got a chance to get in a multi-pitch climb there. A friend named Jasyn met us and Russ's younger brother Ryan was visting and made the accent as well. The weather was perfect and we decided to do the route Hidden Cracks. It was a four pitch climb with varying difficulties. The first pitch was 5.7, second 5.4, third 5.7, and forth 5.6.
Russ took the lead on the first pitch. He had never climbed this route before so that was a pretty brave task. Even though a route says a certain rating it can proove to be difficult. He seemed to do it with little effort.Ryan went up second. I climbed up after him draggin the second rope. I had never done this before and feeling the weight of the rope was a little odd. I had to clip into various gear placement spots during the climb. I turned a corner and was greeted with a huge drop off with some serious exposure. It did rattle me at first, I just stared at the rock and chugged along. At one point there seemed to be no hand holds. That is my worst nightmare. I reached around and eventually made a move trusting my feet. The foot holds were great. I was so eager to get to the top of the first pitch I went past a few gear placements where I needed to clip the trailing rope. This caused me to go back and clip the rope in. I swore that made the climb twice as hard. As I reached the top of the first pitch I saw Ryan. He decided this was a good place to trim his toenails.Russ cleaned the belay station and we waited for Jasyn to make his way up.Here's me testing my anchor. Not the smartest thing in the world to do, and one of the main reasons Russ did not let me lead a climb that day. The only thing holding me in this picture is some rope material. There was probably no chance of real danger by, but why test it?
As we looked down we could see Jasyn climbing his way up, Ryan got some good shots.We all made it with no problems up the first pitch. I don't have any picturs of the second pitch but it was a ho-hum 5.4. The views were pretty but we scampered up that pretty rapidly. The next 5.6 pitch had a interesting beginning. As we get to the top of the second pitch and are looking around at the 3rd Jasyn asks Russ where do we go? Russ thought this was pretty funny after explaining explicedly before we climbed this route that he had never done this before. You could tell Jasyn wasn't worried, but you could also tell he wasn't too sure where to go. The only bolt you could see was reached by crossing a suspect ledge. Your anchor point was 30ft or so behind you. This means if you fell you were dangling over about a 100ft cliff. Thank god it wasn't windy. Needless to say Russ wasn't leading this pitch. Jasyn did it, and he handled it like a pro. He complained of lichen and rotten rocks but still handled it with no problems. I followed second after Jasyn. The route was beautiful, great holds and awesome views. You can see the ledge you have to walk across with this picture. Ryan is making his way to the bolt.Here's more pics of Ryan making his accent.Russ decided to shoot a self portrait while waiting to climb himself.We all survived the third pitch. The last pitch was a 5.6. It was a great route. The only bad part is Jasyn and I climbed last. That wouldn't have been so bad, but I was resting my butt on about 3inches of ledge. I had to stay that way for about an hour.Russ took the lead again and handled it with poise. Russ is really good at making you feel calm and safe. He always seems to know what he's doing, and if he doesn't he's good at faking it. We all made it to the summit safely and had a wonderful day. I can't wait to go to table rock again. There are so many routes there and different types of climbs you could climb there for a month and probably not do them all.

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