Dan, Eric, and I got all excited about doing some "adventure climbing" on a route called Ride the Lightning that we read about online. We drove out on a beautiful fall day, ready for dirt and loose rock—that's "adventure". Unfortunately, we ended up only climbing solid, well-featured, single-pitch andesite cracks and pillars—that's "cragging".

In a drizzle, we pulled up beneath Goose Egg Mountain to look for Ride the Lightning. Our printed copies of the route description were water-smeared or of poor quality and what directions we could decipher were vague. We stared at the southeast face, looking for the distinctive corner and roof. Eventually, we spotted something that looked reasonable. We looked left. We looked right. Sniffing at a few signs of previous travel, we stumbled up some dirt to the line we'd spotted from the road.

Dan got the lead and started up what barely resembled the first pitch in the topo, expecting to see some bolts. He saw some webbing... and not much more in the way of artificial anchors. Goose Egg sat that day on the dividing line between good weather (sun) and bad weather (rain). The wind from the direction of Kloochman Rock sent the rain flying our way, though the sky over our heads shone blue with optimism. Eric and I stood in the muddying dust and encouraged Dan to find the route so we could get moving.

After 30 feet and no sign of the promised bolts, Dan backed off and we scratched our heads. Clearly, we weren't where we thought we were. We tried a few more times, down at the road, to locate the route, but couldn't see anything that looked right. As we stood staring at the face, a young feller in blaze orange informed us with a shake of the head that there was a trail up the back side, why didn't we go up that way?

We'd had our adventure, so now for some climbing. Back down the road, we joined the folks at the Royal Columns, among them a few of our friends: Ania, Colin, and Ryan. The rock was an interesting contrast to granite: sometimes slippery, with uneven cracks that often flared backwards into pods, and lots of tiny incut ledges. Each of us led a route and called it a day.