Linville Gorge Weather/Conditions This Weekend

First, I know that I cannot control the weather. I understand all too well that planning a climbing trip is a hit or miss thing as far as  the weather is concerned.

That being said, my husband and I live in the Birmingham, AL area. And we’ve been planning to go to Linville for a several weeks now. The forecast looked great 10 days ago, and so I went ahead and rescheduled appointments with about 15 of my patients. My husband also rescheduled several important meetings just to make this trip work. We also have my mother in law lined up to watch our kids. Needless to say,  we are both VERY committed to this trip. 

 We were planning on climbing at least 3 routes on Friday. But now the forecast has changed. It looks like  rain most of Friday, but clearing up around midnight. So we’re trying to make it work for Saturday. And we Definitely don’t want to drive 8 hours for nothing. We’re considering going on Saturday instead. There should be more than 12 hours without rain.

So can anyone help give us any advice on what conditions might be like in Linville Gorge the day after it rains?  We really want to make this weekend work if there’s any way possible. It’ll literally be months before we can orchestrate this kind of time off again. So any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all very much for reading this and for any help you can offer.

Thanks

Leigh

Leigh,

Linville is very rainy and tends to dry slowly.

If you are ok with just hiking in wet conditions I’d go for it, 

Otherwise I might go somewhere else, big rock South Carolina drys fast and would be toasty warm, possibly too warm.

If you go to linville I would arrive Friday evening and hopefully you might get a couple pitches on Saturday afternoon.  Personally I’d go somewhere else, but to each their own.

Have fun exploring either way !

Shortoff tends to dry faster among linville crags but is fairly serious multi pitch endeavor, especially if the descent gully is wet.

If you like steep there is stuff at lower hawks bill that will be dry

In my experience, Linville tends to dry very fast, as long as the routes you are climbing are in the sun most of the day. Shortoff dries almost instantly and is my favorite place in Linville, and the descent gully isn't too bad, I would just recommend rapping off the tree halfway down and climbers left in the descent gully rather than going through the fixed rope waterfall. I was in Linville last week after a lot of rain, and the Mummy Buttress was almost completely dry, the Open Book was dry as well, Shortoff was dry, and Table Rock was mostly dry. Regardless, have a great time in linville and enjoy some of the best climbing in the South.