[TR] Forbidden Peak - North Ridge 07/12/2025

[Christopher Fisher]

Trip: Forbidden Peak - North Ridge

Trip Date: 07/12/2025

Trip Report:

 

Spent the weekend climbing the North Ridge of Forbidden Peak (a climb so remote you have to climb over another ridge just to get to it) with a team of 4! It was a full value Alpine climb that doesn’t go too hard at any individual point, but requires the full suite of mountaineering skill sets, and is jam packed with them. This comes out as one of my all time favorite climbs, but had a bittersweet ending due to coming back to the trailhead at 1:30AM only to find two of my car windows smashed, and our happy bags stolen. Rough end to a 21 hour day climbing.

 

GPS tracks here

Our timeline was roughly:
-7:45AM departure from trailhead
-12:00PM Base of the gulley to go up Sharkfin Ridge
-1:30PM over the ridge, and rope up for crossing Boston Glacier
-3:45PM on the North Ridge
-6:15PM stopped at bivy site
-5:15AM Sunday started climbing
-3:00PM Both parties summited, starting descent
-7:00PM Arrived at the Notch of West Ridge Coulier
-9:15PM Finished rappelling down the WRC
-10:40PM Past the last major creek crossing and back on the main trail
-1:30AM back to cars

The approach was straightforward up through the Boston Basin. The creek crossings were reasonably low in the morning. As we got up to the start of the snowfield we caught sight of the gulley we were aiming for to get over sharkfin ridge. 

We briefly lost sight of the gulley we were aiming for as the cloud cover dropped, but thankfully we already had a general sense of where we needed to go before that happened.

The gulley up to the notch we needed was thankfully still fully snow covered, but was quite thin in sections, and will probably start melting out soon (the exposed sections we saw in the gulley had very unconsolidated dirt and rock, and I’m glad we didn’t have to climb it).

We did a double rope rappel down into and out of the bergschrund onto the Boston glacier (there was a 2nd rappel station for single rope rappels).

We then roped up as a team of 4 to cross the Boston Glacier. Crevasses are definitely opening up on the glacier, but we didn’t have any major issues moving around them.

Reading up on beta, there are two primary entrance points to get onto the North Ridge, and we chose the first and steeper option. This seemed to be the right call as we had minimal issue transferring from the snow onto the rock, and talking with another team heading out to do the NW Face who took the other option, they didn’t have kind things to say; it sounded like the other entrance point was sketchily wet and hard to protect when getting on the rock. 

After a scramble up to the ridge proper, we got our first sight of the full climb!

Ryan C on Peakbagger very graciously marked bivy sites on the North Ridge. We stopped at the 2nd to last bivy site on the ridge. Our timeline was going well enough that we decided to start the climb and see how far we could get before dinner. We ended up simul’ing up to the first snowfield, where we opted to stop for the night. The snowfield was nice as we were able to melt some snow on the ridge for the next day. There was no running water between Boston Basin and the end of the rappels down the West Ridge.

Sunday morning we got up and did the rest of the climbing, mostly simul climbing. Most of the ridge was 5th class fun with ~4 sections of 5.5-5.6 climbing (a fun challenge with mountaineering boots and a carry over pack, but still manageable), and longer stretches of class 3 scrambling on the flatter sections. Almost all of the climbing stayed close to the ridge, but there were a couple notable spots you had to get off the ridge slightly to stay in the low/mid class 5 climbing. We could have been a couple hours faster on this section, but a combination of a traffic jam right before the summit + one of our rope teams getting off route, and having to deal with some spicier sections pushed our summit time back a bit.

Snowfield crossing on the ridge

Summit traffic jam

View close to summit looking back down on the North Ridge

I found the crux of the climb to be the descent (via the west ridge), possibly the hardest mountain I’ve had to get off of. I think a major portion of the challenge was descending a 5th class route other than the one we went up. We made the mistake of trying to rappel right off the summit (should have downclimbed the section), and ran into some shenanigans. Once we were done with that, we did 3 more rappels down the face, traversed back left to the ridge, and did 1.5 pitches of downclimbing on the ridge to get down to the notch of the West Ridge Coulier.

There were plenty of rappel stations down the gulley, almost too many (it made it challenging to find the right one). We found a big one that seemed to have more tat then the others, and rappeled off it4-5 single rappels later, plus a final double rappel, and we hit the snowfield below!

We finished the rappels right at sunset, and had to break out our headlamps as we finished the snowfield and started hitting the slab. Getting down the slab sections almost became a serious navigational issue in the dark, as we couldn’t easily tell where the slab bands cliffed out, and it was very easy to slip on sections. Thankfully, with some aid from GPS racks we had, we were able to trend down and right until we found a weakness in the rock face that allowed us to go down and left below the cliff bands. We found a trail leading back to Boston Basin that faded in and out. Then with the aid of GPS tracks + plus another team that rappelled down just after us, we managed to find crossings through the two fastest flowing creeks. And the rest of the way down was just a normal slog to the trailhead.

We got back to the trailhead around 1:30AM, only to find two of my car windows smashed open, and our happy bags stolen): Thankfully most of our valuables were locked away, but the loss of our happy bags were devastating after a 21 hour day climbing. And when it rains, it apparently pours, because about 1 hour into our drive back my car’s low tire pressure light came on. Turns out I managed to puncture the sidewall of my back right tire. Best guess is that it was from a rock on the turnout I parked my car on. Thankfully I had an air pump stowed just for this (and it wasn’t stolen!). It took three stops to refill my tire, but we were able to limp home on it so that I could deal with it later. All in all, one of my all time favorite Alpines, but a very expensive weekend for my car!

 

Gear Notes:
60m rope, mountaineering boots, stove for dinner and melting water on the ridge

Approach Notes:
See GPS tracks above

Edited Wednesday at 03:31 AM by Christopher Fisher
removed duplicate pic

[Grant789]

Ugh sorry about your car.

Thank you for putting in those boot tracks, they were great to follow! Navigating the snow and slabs in the dark is a classic! We did the same 4 years ago on the West Ridge and didnt get to lower camp until 3am....

[Christopher Fisher]

Happy to have helped! 

I believe it, those slab sections were no joke. I think I recall a trip report noting a fatality years ago on that section. Thankfully our navigation of it ended up being relatively straightforward.