Forbidden Peak, West Ridge, August 13th, 2000
Dave's trip report - good account of "the boulder"The North Ridge of Forbidden Peak has been on my list for a while (see last year's attempt), but when Dave suggested we go for the West Ridge in a day, it sounded like a good idea.
The West Ridge is one of the "50 classic climbs" of North America, and thus enjoys incredible popularity. But with good reason. At only 5.3 (or 5.6, depending on the variation), and with only a little, relatively benign glacier crossing, it is one of the easiest of the 50 classics. The rock is solid, and the ridge is supposedly very airy and exposed, making for an excellent climb. The ridge itself is about 500ft high and 1500ft long. It is generally accessed by a 500ft snow couloir, that, straightforward in early season, gets more difficult later on. An alternative to the couloir is a few leads of up to 5.6 along the rock to its left.
Dave looking bad ass on the approach, in the cold blue morning light.
Forbidden has a reputation of being a rather difficult peak to descend... basically because there is no walkoff. The standard route, along the north side of the east ridge, is class 3-4, but very exposed, with difficult routefinding. Most people descend the west ridge and couloir instead. The ridge can be downclimbed, with a few rappels, and people generally rap down the couloir, as it is quite steep, with bad runout.
The only route condition beta we had gotten was 2 weeks old, and stated the couloir had a 15ft vertical section, and a 10ft section of 70 degree ice, leading to easier slopes above. We were up to the challenge though, and felt fairly confident we could overcome whatever difficulties we encountered. To that effect, in addition to rock gear, we brought pickets and ice screws, and an ice tool each (instead of a mountaineering axe). If a short section required two tools, we could just pass them down to each other.
On the approach, with Mt Johanesburg and the Cascade Pass peaks in the backgound
By doing the route in a day, we avoided the need for overnight permits, which are generally hard to come by for Boston Basin (the lush slabby meadows where people camp below the peak). Benji, Dave and I reached the trailhead parking at about 10:30 Saturday night, and slept in the back of my truck and on the ground, in view of the huge north face of Johannesburg Mtn, across the valley. This peak rises 6800ft in 3 horizontal miles, with 5000ft of that being in the final mile. In your face, big! Occasional small ice avalanches roared down the face, even during the night. We also saw several meteors (Perseids) light up the sky. Ahh, felt good to be there.
Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I heard a van door open and close a few times, and saw a solitary headlamp walk by and head up the trail.
At 4:30, Benji woke Dave and I up, and we quickly ate a small breakfast and packed up. Benji seemed to be all ready to go as soon as he was awake, as he just stood around, while Dave and I prepared our gear for the day.
An hour and a half later, we emerged above treeline in Boston Basin. Beautiful day. Mostly in silence, we made our way up and around moraines, fast streams coursing down the slope, lush green plants and flowers, and the marmots waking up and sounding their whistle alarm. Behind us, Johanesburg stood tall and scary, with a parade of spikey Cascade Pass summits to its left. Behind that, the masses of Spider and Formidable were visible, and off to the right a bunch of snowy domes. Right in front of us was long razor sharp ridge of nice-looking rock, which we eventually deciphered into Torment and Forbidden... the sunlight was starting to strike their summits. Eye candy! And peaceful, no one else around.
We started crossing little snowfields and finally reached a slabby gully that we took to the small unnamed glacier below the south face of Forbidden. At this point we had seen a person on a snow patch partway up the couloir, and then he disappeared. The solo guy?, I thought. Obviously, the couloir was doable, even if it looked a tad "bergschrundy". Later, we noticed a party of three ascending the snow slope at the bottom of the couloir. All of a sudden, they were gone... we realized they must be climbing in the moat, instead of on the snow. We got an inkling of what we were up against.
Dave and Benji in the snow gully leading to the glacier.
We followed a route along the upper section of the glacier, the snow so solid, and the glacier open enough, that we didn't bother to rope up. We sat down for a break near the top of the glacier, where we discussed how to gain the snow slab below the couloir. It was adjacent to the glacier, but in between was a mess of toterring ice and snow blocks. We decided to head up the rock slabs above, and try to intersect the snow slab at some point. Once on the slab, the best way looked to be to climb onto the snow from above. So we continued up the slabs.
It was around this time that the feeling of the day turned from "We're making great time, everything's going well, this is going to be a great, successful day", to "there's no way we're going to make it up, let's bail".
Bad picture of the west ridge couloir, with our route shown in red. Benji dropped his ice tool just before we climbed back onto snow from the slabs, and it fell all the way down to the rock just visible on the snow at the bottom of the picture.
The deceptive slabs lured us up. Hmm... feeling kind of class 4-ish. Should we go back down? No, too scary to downclimb this stuff in mountaineering boots. Oh well, not too far to the snow now... hmm... this is feeling distinctly low class 5. Hmm... I'm stemming against little dihedral things because it's now too steep for my mountaineering boots to stick to the smooth slab, this is getting kind of scary, and there ain't no way to down climb now... where are my handholds?!? Dave calmly announced he was getting a little sketched.
I was off slightly left of Dave and Benji, and was able to reach a section of slab that had some little ledges, which I scampered up until reaching a nice, well placed, well timed 2 foot ledge right next to where we could climb onto the snow. Benji and Dave were on a slightly smoother section of slab. I had one of the ropes in my pack, and asked Dave and Benji if they wanted me to toss it to them. At first, the answer was no. But very shortly thereafter, yes! Convenienty, there was a rap sling in place on a small horn. I clipped in, and belayed them over. On their way over, a bouncing sound was heard. Someone lose a water bottle? I looked over, and saw what appeared to be an ice tool bouncing down the slab.
Benji retrieving his ice tool.
Strangely, no one seemed to react to this event. I expected an "oh shit" or something, but no such sound came from Benji, who had dropped his tool, or Dave, who was concentrating on making a delicate move in his clunky boots. The ice tool continued to fall, and near the bottom of the slab where it should have slid into the dark moat to have been lost forever, it magically bounced up onto the glacier, and began to slide down the glacier, missing any crevasses, and came to rest at a flat spot about 400ft below us.
Some might say that a "higher power" delivered the axe from its fate in the moat, but I disagree. Whatever higher power there is certainly thought that the ice tool was a goner too, because he/she placed another ice tool for Benji to find on a moraine lower down in Boston Basin (keep reading).
Luckily, _someone_ was paying attention to the tool, because neither Dave nor Benji had any idea where it went. I indicated to Benji approximately where it had come to rest. We set up a single line rappel, and as he headed down to retrieve it, told Dave and I to "have a nice nap".
Just before climbing back onto the snow. South face and east ridge of Forbidden in the background. Um, how is that snow sticking to that slab?
Some clouds had been building in the distance, and started to swirl around the peak now. These events (the sketchy slab, the dropped ice tool, and the incoming clouds) had conspired to take a bit of the steam away from us.
From our perch, we could hear voices in the couloir, close by. Was it still the party we saw before? Wow, they were moving slowly!!
Once Benji was back, which actually didn't take that long, Dave led onto the snow, up a short 70 degree section, and down into the first "bergschrund" of the couloir. We regrouped together here. In front of us was a 20ft vertical and overhanging wall of snow - it was from what the block of snow we had just climbed over had fallen off. The only option to continue was to shimmy up in the moat, stemming between rock and snow. It didn't look too bad, but it was a tricky move to get into it. I considered leading it, but gave it up for Dave. He decided to remove the crampon on the foot that would be mostly on rock.
Mostly because we were lacking motivation, we didn't let Dave use the whole rope... so instead he was only able to lead half a pitch. It was also getting hard to communicate up the moat, so it was probably a good thing.
Dave makes the first move into the moat (on his right)
It took a long time, but finally it was my turn... the climbing wasn't very hard, but it was unusual, and my legs began to get pumped from the stemming. With both crampons on, the footing on the rock side was uncertain. As I approached Dave, all of a sudden, one of my feet slipped and I fell, totally unexpected. I slid down a good ways (10 feet?) on a rock ramp, and sort of ended up upside down. As I righted myself, I heard Dave say "I guess that ice screw wasn't very bomber". I had pulled out an ice screw that was the "zig in a zag", that's why I fell so far on toprope. I was suprised I was unhurt, 'cause the fall wasn't very "clean". It was also unsettling because it was so unexpected, like a hold breaking off or something. I squeezed up onto a little ledge on the rock side of the moat, beside Dave. Cool belay! Very cramped, but pretty comfortable, sitting on a foot wide ledge, with your feet braced against the snow side of the moat. It was a bit sketchy for Dave, since he had only one crampon with which to brace against the hard snow. The belay anchor was a token ice screw in the snow, and a bomber picket placed horizontally.
Though we lacked any motivation to continue, realizing we had no chance to summit at this pace (the snow in the couloir didn't let up anytime soon above us, and there were more bergschrunds, so we would have had to keep going in the moat), the climbing was pretty cool, unusual, and very "mixed". Dave had used rock pro, snow pickets and ice screws on this lead (though its questionable whether the ice screws were of any use :-). Benji came up to the cramped ledge, and the next easy pitch led us up out of the moat, onto the rock, and to the first set of rap slings we could find, so we could start gettin' down!
What's going on here??? I took this picture from our belay platform in the moat. Benji's down there somewhere, right in the center of the picture, and Dave's foot (you can see the crampon strap - must be his right foot) is in the upper right of the picture
Benji and I heard Dave talking to someone when he reached the rap anchors. It was a climber rappeling down the couloir. Had one of the other parties bailed too? Nope, he was alone. He had just soloed the North Ridge, after having left the parking lot at 3:30am. Aha... so that's who I saw down in the parking lot. At this point, it was 12:30pm. In only nine hours, he had travelled up to Boston Basin, crossed Sharkfin col (supposedly 20ft of unprotectable loose 5.7), crossed a good portion of the huge and very crevassed Boston glacier, climbed the North Ridge (5.0, over half a mile long), down climbed the West Ridge, and was now most of the way down the couloir. He had climbed over 6000 vertical feet, and lots of technical terrain, and it was only 9 hours later!!!. He was rapping down the snow, instead of using the rock anchors on the sides of the couloir. He quickly chopped a bollard at the edge of the snow chunk, and continued down, pulling his two ropes smoothly. We later saw him running down the glacier. Wow, Cascades Hardman! A somewhat tricky rap led us back to the first bergschrund, and from there we down climbed onto the snow slab, to the rock slabs, and back onto the glacier, where we found a decent crevasse for a little ice climbing. We each took turns being lowered into it, and climbing the vertical, and slightly overhanging snow/ice walls. Fun stuff. The clouds had moved in a little more, but not too bad. It was pretty cold and windy though.
We reached the edge of the glacier, and did some glissading down a lower snow gully, onto more gentle rock slabs which we descended into the basin. Benji was amazed at the intrusions which formed stripes all over the slabs (geology major). We then reached a nice boulder, where we took a break and admired the view.
Benji at the moat belay (taken from rap anchors)
Then we climbed the boulder to hell. We spent an hour doing bouldering problems on it. Dave remarked something about people spending thousands of dollars building the UW climbing rock, and it not even coming close to this solitary boulder in Boston Basin in climbing quality.
We then met Mr. climbing ranger, who tried to trick us into saying we'd camped in Boston Basin the previous night ("So, how was it up here last night?"), so he could ask if we had permits. When we were finally all chilling out, he remarked that the Boston Basin quotas didn't even fill up this weekend - there were only two parties registered (both attempting the west ridge - the 2 parties we saw).
Benji and Dave pull the moves...
Further down, Benji, who must have amazing eyesight, spotted an ice tool on a moraine, from a hundred feet away. It was a little rusted and old, but hey, booty! To his credit, Dave correctly identified the brand of tool from a hundred feet away.
Back at the trailhead, Dave was concerned that we wouldn't eat in Marblemount. He was starving. I tried to reassure him that Benji and I were also starving, and that we would definitely eat in Marblemount. But he kept asking, to make sure. I think he was still traumatized from driving home, starving, after Fisher Peak, and everything was closed by the time we drove through, and the others didn't want to stop anywhere else. I also assured him that we wouldn't nearly freeze to death, as we had in Brian's car on that trip.
Descending down through Boston Basin
We stopped at the bunny diner just west of town, and had some good trout, but the service was distinctly Buffalo Run-like this time.