North Ridge of Forbidden Peak Sahale Peak. July 24-25

Matt, Cormac, Greg and I arrived in the Cascade Pass parking lot late Friday night. The bottom 1000ft of Mt. Johanesburg was in view. The remainder was shrouded in dense clouds. Our plan was to climb the North Ridge of Forbidden Peak over the next two days. Saturday, we'd climb up to Boston Basin, climb 5th class rock to Sharkfin col, rappel onto the Boston glacier, and cross it to the base of the North Ridge, where we'd bivi. Sunday we'd do our climb. The technical crux of the climb was actually on the first day, on the approach, in Sharkfin col.

I slept in the back of my truck, facing Mt. Johanesburg (hereafter refered to as "Big J"). Throughout the night, the cloud deck lowered and lowered until none of Big J was visible. Saturday we awoke to gloomy skies and low visibility. Every time we heard a roar from Big J (the mountain's north face is decorated with hanging glaciers and snowpatches that calve quite often), we'd look over, but of course we couldn't see anything. It was pretty annoying.

We began the trek up to Boston Basin at around 9:30am. An hour and a half later, we reached treeline, and the low camp in the basin. There was no improvement in the weather. None of us felt like wandering around in a whiteout trying to find Sharkfin col, then climbing wet loose mid-5th class rock, followed by a long traverse over a crevassed glacier in the whiteout. And the rain. So we bailed.

Leaving for Boston Basin, trying to ignore the weather.

We arrived back at the cars sometime after noon. On the way down, we passed many parties headed up to Boston Basin. We told them "I hope the weather clears", which was a complete lie, because if it did, we'd feel like idiots for bailing. We were getting pretty upset at this summer in the Cascades. None of us had climbed much of note yet... the weather always seemed to thwart us. We were thankful we weren't alone though, as many of the climbers we met expresed the same sentiment.

We drove back to town for food and drink, and then decided to go check out Diablo Dam. We drove into the very odd "company town" of Diablo and hiked 400ft up an embankment to the top of the dam, and marveled at man's conquering of the Skagit river.

Looking straight down 400ft from the walkway above the dam.

Two spillway doors were open, sending water off a huge cliff in a spectacular roar. Wow, who needs mountain views when you can look at man's awesome feats of engineering!

We wondered what the Skagit Gorge looked like before it was dammed.

There was a small whirlpool near the dam intake. We watched it for about ten minutes, hoping a duck would accidentally get too close and be sucked into the turbines. That didn't happen.

We drove back to the Cascade Pass trailhead that evening, cooked dinner and went to bed. Visibility was bad. Real bad. We could barely see the trees along the edge of the parking lot.

Since we bailed on our climb, we had switched to plan B. Ski! (all except for Cormac). Greg, who had climbed Sahale Peak the previous weekend, told us the entire Sahale Arm was skiable. If so, this would give us a 5000ft vertical run, in late July, not on a volcano!

I'm sure Greg wasn't too thrilled to be climbing the same mountain two weekends in a row, but we had skis this time, so it would be a lot more fun for him. We awoke to more gray skies Sunday morning, but things were looking better as we left the parking lot and hiked up the Cascade Pass trail. After negotiating about five billion nearly flat switchbacks (you know the trail builders have gone switchback-crazy when you can look straight at the feet of a hiker who's actually several hundred yards further up the trail from you) we reached the pass. We saw the mountains to the east were mostly cloud-free.

Looking east from Cascade Pass.

From here, we hiked up onto the Sahale Arm. The snow was patchy. Either Greg's memory had failed, or there'd been a lot of snowmelt since last weekend. Oh well. We were back in a whiteout, until we broke out of the clouds around 7000ft. The entire west side of the Cascades was cloud-covered, except for the highest peaks. The mountains to the east were in the clear. Streams of cloud material were zooming across Cascade Pass from the west, and dissipating upon reaching the other side. It was pretty cool to watch.

Clouds moving over Cascade Pass.

Big J.

We roped up for the final 1000ft of the climb up the Sahale glacier, though we saw only one crevasse.

Sahale glacier.

We reached the summit pinnacle just as a guided group was coming off the summit. They continued down, and we walked around the backside of the summit block and scrambled to the top. Kind of difficult in tele-boots. From here we had a pretty incredible view.

Forbidden Peak from Sahale. The North Ridge is on the right skyline.

View from the summit down into Horseshoe basin.

Descending from the summit block.

The snow below the summit was slushy, but quite smooth, providing for over 1000ft of nice turns. Then we started hitting the patchy snow. Each snow patch (maybe 3 or 4 times we had to take our skis off) was actually pretty long, and the skiing was much better than we thought it was going to be. We skied the final pitch down to the east side of Cascade Pass, and hiked a short distance back up to the top, where Cormac was waiting.

Matt posing in front of "Big J". Our ski descent took us along Sahale Arm, on the left, then down to Cascade Pass, and from there down to the parking lot, which is below the face of Big J.

View of the Triplets from Sahale Arm. As soon as the marmot in the foreground saw my camera, he scurried out of the picture, but I took it before he left the frame. Ha ha!

After some well-deserved food and water, we began the final descent down the "headwall" of Cascade Pass. There is one tricky steep traverse halfway down, to get around the cliff bands. Greg took a bit of a slide into the bushes and rocks. Oops.

The final part of the descent turned out to be much better than expected. We'd thought it would be sun-cupped, but it was actually really smooth if you were able to avoid the chunky avalanche debris. We were able to ski down to about the 3600ft level, and were all impressed at the excellent quality of the snow... and it's almost August!

Phil descending from the top of Cascade Pass. Eldorado in the background.