The weekend started off with some fun boating on Lake Wylie with Tim and Nora. We all were very well hydrated after a full day of drinking radlers, somewhat dodging thunderstorms, wake surfing, and my failed attempts at sky skiing. During our dinner at a Fishing Club, Tim and I worked out a timeframe to go to Ship Rock on Sunday.
So we left early on Sunday morning and drove up to Ship Rock. Both of us were expecting warm weather as it was late June and Charlotte had temp in the 90s. However, as we pulled on to the Blue Ridge parkway, nature had different idea on what the weather should behave like. A wicked gust started to whip up and immediate brought the temps way down. We both looked at each other and knew it was going to be rough “shiver” day since we didn’t plan properly. We scrounged through the Jeep and were able to come up with an extra-shirt for each of us, and I found half a set of fingerless yelp gloves.
So to recap:
- Temperature had dropped 20 degrees
- Huge gusting winds
- Each of us had shorts and 2 t-shirts a piece
- And we found out the cliff was Northwest facing, so the sun wasn’t showing up anytime soon.
We shivered away up the trail and to the base of route. I lost at rock/paper/ scissors, so Tim got the first pitch of “Airlie Gardens”. It had some ‘choose your own adventure’ scrambling up to a slab, then you get to nice roof and dihedral. You have to pull some really cool airy moves to gain the next ledge system. I got P2 and went up into a big roof cap dihedral. Moving left brought me into some huge exposure above Tim. I traversed about 15ft out on horizontal crack and was finally able to pull above the roof and scamper to the top.
Our standard rappel was blocked by top ropers, so we went over to rap “Boardwalk.” It was cluster of people because the sun had started to poke up in this area. As we hit the ground we tried to find another route but everything was taken in the sun. We manage to get on “Hindu Kush” behind a party that look to be finishing P2. Tim won rock/paper/scissors again, so up Tim went on P1. It was cool flake ramp, then eventually turn into a big traverse at a chossy ledge till you get to pull the roof. The beta was don’t do this route, if you are on a 1st date with someone. Tim proved this to be accurate, as the finishing move a whaling motion up onto a ledge. I went up P2/P3 in one push quickly catching up to and talking to the party ahead of us. P2 had a nice airy traverse, and P3 was a slabby scramble. At the end, instead of waiting for the other party I went right in the last dihedral. A committing move in the air with only the tiniest of c3’s to protect.
We rapped down “Boardwalk” which had started to become less of a mess. After eating, we quickly scampered up “Boardwalk”, and called it a day. It was good to check out a new area, and get a feel for it.
