On Sunday morning, I wiggled around in my sleeping bag until I could no longer bear the feeling of my skin crawling. Low and behold, my Bivy site under some tall pine trees was being besieged my large black ants, of which a few had found there way into my sleeping bag. Being from the South, I brushed them aside, knowing that they were no Match for the biting red ants that dominate that region. Most everyone had already begun their morning, since the sun was already lighting the partly cloudy sky so I begun the task of making breakfast. It was only 6:00am and we had what we thought would be a long day ahead of us, climbing a bolted Alpin Clippin route on Mazama's, Goat Wall. We were parked and hiking up the talus slope by 7:30am, and at the base of the route at a quarter after eight. Looking up, it appeared that indeed it would be a long day of climbing.

The original plan was to climb as two parties of two, but after a long night of telling campfire stories we managed to gain one more member for the climb. So, the new plan was to climb as a team of two and a team of three which we only realized at the base of the route. Since we brought only two 60m ropes, Brian and Jeff had Kurt (our fifth rope-mate) tie in a few meters from the end so that He and Jeff could Follow together to speed things up a bit. It was kind of an awkward setup, but since Brian was along, I'm sure it was Mountaineer tested and approved.

While Brian and Jeff waited for Kurt to catch up from taking a short reading break, Michael and I started out by bypassing the first Pitch in the gully to the left of the main rib that forms the base of the route. In actuality, we did not see the first shiny Bolt sparkling in the morning sun, but nonetheless we ended our scramble at the top of the first pitch and roped up there. From this first set of chains, I led up and right, across some slabs and a few short vertical sections to another set of chains at about a half rope length. I would have been easy to continue on, had the rope drag not been so tremendous.

From this spacious Belay stance, I brought Michael up and he led out right and then up past several closely spaced bolts. It was becoming very apparent that the theme of the day was going to be "clip one and skip one", since the route was so liberally protected. After I followed this pitch and led up the next to a large ledge, where I tied off a three foot diameter tree for a belay Anchor. A Move of the belay was required after this, so we walked the 50 or so feet across the dirty bench to the base of the next pitch.

While we were climbing, one could not help but notice that the wind had slowly and steadily picked up as we got higher. Off to the west, near Washington and Rainy Passes, there were deep blue clouds that insinuated that the weather was being less than cooperative there. This would be confirmed later as we learned that, for a time, it was actually snowing; At the end of May, no less. I was glad that I had chose to wear my heavier fleece shirt and a long pair of pants, rather than just shorts and a T-shirt.

Michael led up and right, after spending a minute moving the belay, and brought me up to the gleaming half inch belay bolts at the top of the pitch. From here, I led up a Slab on small holds for the hands that made great friction for the feet, to another small belay stance. Once I reeled Michael in, he trounced on up the rest of the slab to the top of a short pinnacle that broke the ridge line. We belayed each other across the short scramble down ten feet and across the notch to anther set of belay anchors below a wide overhanging groove.

From this new belay stance, I led up and around a small leaning block and into the groove. The bolts dotting the way went up and left, and I followed them, Clipping each one as I made the airy moves to the slab above. A few more crumbly moves found me at the next set of anchors and I clipped myself in and belayed Michael up to my ledge. From there, Michael Lead a short slab that ended with a dirty slope where he drug the rope up to the next belay stance. As the rope came tight on my Belay Device, though he had not reached the belay yet, I started up from my perch.

After that short bit of simul-climbing, the next pitch started up a somewhat steep slab that was protected by about 13 bolts. I say somewhat steep, since it was steeper than the other slabs so far on the route, but it was loaded with holds all over the place making the climbing rather pleasant, though not very hard. I finished just past the half way mark on the rope and unlike the other pitch, was actually able to communicate to Michael as I put him on belay. He followed the pitch quickly, then started up the next one almost immediately. Once he disappeared around the corner, up and right of the belay I was at, we were once again regulated to rope tugging and yelling over the increasing winds.

He linked the next two pitches together, eliminating some major rope drag by back cleaning a few bolts so that the rope ran much straighter. Once I reached the spot where he had remove the Draw from below him, I had to flip the rope over a horn below me, to be able to continue on. Though flipping the rope was a bit annoying, in the long run, being able to combine these two pitches made much more sense than belaying only 25 meters from the last set of anchors. This smart maneuver brought us to the base of the final pitch.

According to others who have climbed the route, this final pitch was the Crux, although we supposedly had already done two pitches of 5.9 that we somehow had blown past. I led up through a small roof that exits to the left next to three closely spaced bolts and up to the final anchor. This was indeed probably the hardest pitch on the route with a short bit of 5.9 climbing, though the Exposure makes the moves more enjoyable. I clipped the final anchors and brought Michael to the top where I looked at my watch. The last few seconds ticked by before it turned 11:00am for a total of 2 hours and 45 minutes of climbing from the bottom of the route. Not too bad for what was supposedly 11 pitches of climbing, though with the bypass of the lowest pitch it was only 10 for us.

We unroped and scrambled up to some rocks near the ridge crest to sit and wait for the rest of the group while munching on a bar and slurping a package of GU. After a couple hours, they topped out with some hoots and hollers as this was Kurt's first multi-pitch climb since a serious head injury he had sustained last year. Once we had regrouped we proceeded to begin the multitude of rappels that are required to get back to the ground. On the way down we passed seven other climbers on their way up in various groups with whom we had camped with the night before. That night we shared many laughs, as we joked about our multi-party siege of the route that day.