Bailed so that I can bail again

Over my spring break, my brother-in-law, Patrick, and I headed up to Linville Gorge for some climbing.

I still have my goal for 2010 of climbing a 5-pitch 5.5 climb in Linville called the Mummy. It's a bit of an introductory climb for people who get more serious about traditional rock climbing, but I feel like I'm still not quite ready for it.

Patrick and I geared up and hit the road early on Wednesday of that week (April 7). We heard that some bad weather was going to roll in on Thursday, so rather than head straight for linville and have a long hike+long climb on Wednesday, we did some climbing at Crowder's Mt. in Gastonia, NC first.

I lead a clean 5.6 sport climb and a nice and easy 5.3 trad climb at Crowders on Red Wall.

After that, we hit the road and headed for Table Rock at Linville Gorge, NC. Before the trip, I called the Grandfather Mountain Ranger District (like I always do) to check on route closure due to peregrine falcon nesting as well as to get any other information that I might need. I found out that the gate to the Table Rock parking lot (1.4 miles away from the parking lot on a steep, switch-backy road) was closed due to a "landslide" according to the ranger service.
When we started our driving approach to Table Rock on the dirt road, we saw what they were talking about. Downed trees were everywhere...most likely due to a really bad wind storm.

The highlight of the drive was when Patrick spotted a nice black bear in a tree not 20 feet from the dirt road. Awesome!

We parked at the gate, geared up, and hiked in to Devil's Cellar on Wednesay night.

By 10 am the next morning, we were at the base of Jim Dandy 5.4 on the eastern face of Table Rock. It is a 3 pitch climb that is almost 300 in length but, due to the traversing nature of the route only puts you up around 210ft above the route base. I was stoked about this climb as it would have been my first multipitch mixed route. I climed the first pitch really clean and enjoyed my placement choices in between bolts. I skipped the last bolt on the first pitch before the anchors because I found a cam placement opportunity that would have been more on line with the route I was climbing.

After I set up the anchor at the top of the first pitch (by a lovely pine tree growing out of the rock), Patrick climbed and cleaned the route and joined me 90 ft later. Right at this time, we saw the storm clouds rolling in and we both did that "I think we can make it" look at each other before realizing that we'd only gone 1/3 of the way and the liklihood of us climbing on wet rock...or...worse, getting hit by lightning was probably better than use finishing the route safely. So...we bailed.

I can't wait to go back and finish the route!