Forbidden Peak, West Ridge

August 13-14, 2004

Paul Belitz, Dietrich Belitz

I'm a moron. This became very apparent this weekend, when my dad and I set out to do another of the Fifty Crowded Climbs, the West Ridge of Forbidden. Since he had a 8 hour drive to get to the trailhead from Eugene, we opted for two days. He drove up Friday, picked me up around noon, and we headed for the Marblemount ranger station. We picked up a permit to camp in Boston Basin, and shortly thereafter we found ourselves at the trailhead, remarking how hot it was. Some last minute packing and we got going. It was hot. Really hot. Really, incredibly, HOT. In the nineties at least. I consoled myself that it's only 2700 or so feet to camp, we'd do it under three hours. For sure.

The trail was steep, dusty, and overgrown. And it was REALLY hot. We stopped at the first creek crossing, got out the filter, and downed two liters. We kept going, and soon hit a large area of downed trees and brush, probably an avalanche path. Here we lost the trail, and where my being a moron kicked in. I found a little path going up the hill, and managed to convince myself that this was the trail. We went up. Into slide alder. And salmon berry thickets. Soon we were in the absolutely nastiest terrain I have encountered in the mountains. We couldn't see our feet, or the ground, for that matter. Seeing the sky was also out of the question. Stupidly, rather than backtracking, we kept going, traversing left to where we knew the mountain was. An hour and a half of intense thrashing later, we emerged from the brush, thoroughly whipped. Wow. I was thankful that I didn't have skis. Even so, we were scratched, pissed off, and very tired. Oh, and hot, too. I staggered into camp, realizing that the 'short' approach was the toughest 2700 vertical feet of non-technical terrain that I've been through; it had taken 4 hours. I can't claim to be very fast in the mountains, but even I typically do 2700 in less than three hours.

Forbidden from the approach, right before we got lost.	Ditto, with Dad in the foreground.	Bushwhack! It was like this for about 1.5 hours.

At camp, we pitched the Betalight, pump several gallons of water through the filter, and ate. We went to bed at 9, setting the alarm for 4am. I dreamed/hallucinated mice creeping into the Betalight to snarf the Odwalla Bar right next to my head. I swear I chased off a real mouse, but I can't say it wasn't imaginary. At 4 the alarm went off, so we crawled out and found that it was STILL hot. 65 degrees according to our (untrustworthy) thermometers. Damn. We got going at 4:45, up the slabs leading to the glacier. I strapped my crampons to my sneakers, which took a while, but after only an hour and a half and 2100 feet from camp we hit rock. The couloir was melted out as expected, so we started up the slabs and gullies to the left. We soloed the first 200 feet, but then opted to belay up the grassy loose choss. Two pitches brought us to the notch. A short rest and we started simul-climbing.

After 300 feet the ridge got steeper, so we opted to belay. In reality, the ridge is never very hard, but since nothing kills time like switching between simul-ing and belaying, we just belayed. Really fun, low fifth class climbing combined with fantastic positioning on the ridge makes this thing the classic that it is. Aftern 2.5 hours from the notch we got to the summit. The view was spectacular, with Buckner, Sahale, Boston, Johannesburg, Eldorado, Klawatti, Primus, etc, etc, etc, etc all visible just by turning your head.

Johannesburg is impressive. Vertical bushwhacking, anyone?	Boston and Sahale from camp, with alpenglow	Access Forbidden. In the morning, just before sunrise. Sorry about the blurry photo.

Having left our shoes and crampons at the edge of the snow, we had no option other than to descend our climb. A mix of short raps, belayed downclimbing, and down soloing brought us to the notch in the exact same amount of time as going up had taken. Now all we had to do was rap the gully (too damn loose for comfortable downclimbing). Five raps shouldn't have taken so long, but we had a series of snafus that ate time. The third rap deposited Dad five feet short of the next anchor, on a 45 degree slab sans holds (hard to describe, but nasty). He climbed up a little ways, and told me to rap from a sling halfway between us. I didn't argue, and the intermediate anchor brought me to the slings that we belayed our first pitch off of. Dad followed, and we pulled the rope. Until it jammed. It didn't dislodge with close to full bodyweight, so I reled the pitch, thoroughly pissed. When I got to the sling, I started cursing in earnest. The rope had jammed between the sling and the rock! The last inch of the rope had bent over, and was cammed in a way that pulling simply jammed it in with more force. I have never seen anything like it. I added a new (longer) sling and a rap ring, and rappelled, again. Another 100 feet put us at our shoes.

The approach gully. Not bad going up, but down.....	Dad at the notch, with Glacier Peak in the background.	400 or so feet from the notch.

Posing just before the summit, with Eldorado in the background.	Buckner. I'm skiing the NF next spring.	Summit. Now we just have to get down, no big deal.

Downclimbing the glacier was uneventful, despite my punching through the overhanging lip of snow and nearly falling into a deep moat. Endless slabs brought us to our camp, where I made a severely overdue deposit in the composting toilet. We filtered more water, ate some Ramen noodles, and at 6 we headed down the trail. We didn't get lost, and couldn't figure out how we had gotten lost the day before. We got back to the car at 8.

We ate dinner along the way, and got back to Seattle at 11:30. We crashed in my dorm room after a looong day. We slept for eight hours, and I'm still tired writing this. Breakfast at Starbucks and Dad headed off for another five hour drive, back to Eugene.