Topping out on Flyboys, an 1800ft climb. That is not me in this photo.

This past Saturday I went up Flyboys, an 18 pitch, 1800 ft, climb in Mazama, Washington. I lead every pitch with my climbing partner Caitlin handling the belaying.

It was pretty awesome. Maybe even epic.

Flyboys has been on my todo list for a long time as it's a pretty moderate route, with easy access, and a ton of bolts. And it's super long, which is its main attraction.

We woke up at 5:30 am I was delighted to see that there was only one party ahead of us at the parking lot — I really didn't want to get stuck behind multiple slow parties. After a 30 minute approach there were at least 10 more cars in the parking lot. It was going to be a busy day here.

At 6:30 we started climbing.

A conga line of folks waiting to get on the climb.

Pitch after pitch, belay after belay, we slowly made our way up. Sadly we didn't get to go as fast as I would have liked, as the party ahead of us was having issues with the climbing (it might have been a little bit above their pay grade). But they were super nice folks so we cheered them on, sent positive vibes, and chatted quite a bit with both them and the party behind us.

Eventually however they got stuck around pitch 12 and asked for some help. We hatched a little plan where I would lead the route and then Caitlin would follow me and place a rope past the section they couldn't manage (climber speak: Caitlin put draws on bolts 3 and 4 so they were essentially on top rope through the crux). This way they could still lead most of the route, but the tricky part would be well protected and they could cheat their way through if necessary.

Side note: a lot of climbing is mental. And when you're 1000 ft above where you started and have been climbing for hours, your brain can act funky even if you're staying hydrated and eating the right food. I think this was the problem they were facing. Had this pitch been earlier I bet they could have made it.

So now we were the first party!

Myself and Caitlin somewhere up the side of a cliff.

With nobody to worry about ahead of us I could just climb as fast as I'd like and setup the belay anchors without dealing with another party, and it was just wonderful. I was all smiles.

Party #3 also skipped ahead of the previous group, and caught up with us after a bit. But it was all chill as we were mostly climbing at the same pace.

The view from the top of pitch 18 as I belayed Caitlin up.

We finished pitch 18' at 5:21pm, for a total time of 10:23:12. This was roughly double what I think we could have done — but the weather was perfect and what else were we going to do that day? Besides eat pizza, because we did do that.

Some fun Apple Watch stats:

I'm really curious what the spike at 10am was. If I do this climb again (I'm sure I will) I'll take some notes.