NW Face - Forbidden Peak (7/19/25)

[Jeromy]

This past Saturday, Trey and I made an 18hr C2C ascent of the NW face (ridge). Neither of us had been to the area before and were keen to check it out. As someone who loves ridges but hates snow walking and has never been on a glacier, I decide I would just deal.

Here's a little write up about two rock climbers going glacier walking and getting gripped. 

We left the car at 3:30am, enjoying good trail and crisp morning air. Passing several nice groups of folks on their way to climb Sahale (apparently the route of the weekend but we missed the memo). We soon arrived to Boston Basin and made our way up to Sharkfin col.

Here we made a route finding error, assuming it would be the obvious snow gully to notch with a beaten in path. Both of us glazed over this part in researching the route. Whoops. At the notch, time was wasted downclimbing and re climbing mud-choss with a sense of wrongness about how high above the glacier we were and the absence of good looking rap stations. Eventually realizing we were too far east, we descended to the correct gully and scrambled up the gully to a pin anchor where it became smooth stone with not many positive features. We opted to scramble up left alongside the gully on easier but rotten rock to avoid roping up. 

(Boston Glacier view from the wrong notch)

Two raps brought us onto the snow. We snacked and rested for a bit, soaking in the enormity of the Boston glacier & Mt. Logan across the valley. We roped up and set off. As I led us through the maze of the glacier I came to peace with two things:

1) I will fall into a bottomless pit at any moment, without warning.
2) I will never understand why people like glacier travel. 

(Boston Glacier - Sharkfin Col directly above Trey)

We arrived at the North ridge notch and started up. I am really soft and this was one of the most fucked up bits of climbing I have ever done. It's quite steep dirt, but has too much gravel in it to create steps or just slam a crampon into. It just crumbles away as your try to make a step, also providing nearly nothing you can hold onto. So to climb it you are more or less kicking in an insecure feeling front-point into the muddy gravel with no hands, then standing up onto this single point, trusting your life to it. Rinse and repeat. 

I would suggest future parties climbing this in mid july climb over rock a bit further south on the N ridge and do a rap or two on the other side to the glacier. It would at least be protectable. 

Walking down the forbidden glacier to the toe of the NW face was very pleasant and served up incredible views.

(Starting up what would be the Crux of the day. Looking back at N ridge notch)

We took a lunch break at a nice flat spot and sized up the steepest bit of glacier yet to access to rock. It was quite a lot more broken up, with more ice exposed than expected. Armed with approach shoes, aluminum 'pons, an ultralight axe and no snow/ice pro this last section proved to be the most daunting.

(Looking up at NW face. Route access from the right)

I led us up, finding a narrow sliver of passable snow between the ice and crevasses to level with the access at ~7200ft. It was a mess of glacial chunder. Looking up, we spotted a ramp of snow at ~7500ft that would potentially provide access and we committed to continuing up. At several points there was only an inch of snow over ice which provided some quite puckering travel. Eventually we reached the snow ramp. It turned out to be at most 4 inches thick so we did a traversing lower off a bollard and finally onto the rock. 

A wave of relief came over us once on the rock. Back to my happy place. After hanging out on a ledge for a while, we headed up. The rock was much better than expected and provided excellent ridge climbing. We solo'd the route in 2 hours & downclimbed the West Ridge + cat scratch in another 2 hours, stopping at the bottom of the ridge to chat with some kind people who attempted the West ridge.

(NW Face)

"You can tell we're at the top because of the views" -Trey 

(Downclimbing the W ridge)

Once down & off the snow, we rested on some nice slabs then chatted at high camp with some folks about their climbs the next day before leisurely hiked out of Boston basin in incredible evening light. 

While not quite on par with the CNR of Stu, The NW face + W ridge is a very high quality & fun ridge outing. If not for the price of admission, this would be one of the most popular climbs in the state. 

Don't be like us and sandbag yourself in late July on a low snow year. I'll do anything to not wear boots but having light boots and proper crampons would have made things much faster & more safe. 

 

Gear: We brought singles 0.2-#2 & some nuts (didn't use it but it was nice insurance), 7.8mm 60m rope, approach shoes, aluminum crampons, UL axe, some glacier kit.

Edited 19 hours ago by Jeromy

[Grant789]

Nice work! I'm the opposite sort of soft to you. Was fine with the mud scramble to get onto the forbidden glacier, but HATED that loose chimney pitch!