The Forbidden 3-Way

[Sam Boyce]

A few days ago Lani and I did a fun link up on forbidden. We climbed the East ridge North Ridge and West Ridge. This is a rad way to move through a lot of scrambling terrain.

Uncertain weather before the atmospheric river gave us a pretty narrow window to work with, so we headed up the evening before and bivied at the base of the East ridge. We left the B basin trail around 5pm and set up camp around 8 for an early night. The cloud ceiling quickly raised up, putting us in a thick,misty whiteout for the whole of the night. 

We woke up to even more whiteout and low confidence, expecting to bail we went back to sleep for a few hours. We ended up leaving the bivy around 8am. We climbed up the East ridge, then down climbed the north ridge. Down climbing the North Ridge was surprisingly mellow, we didn't end up needing to rappel. And the route finding was almost easier on the way down than the way up. There is only one 20' section of 5.5 at the very bottom, otherwise it's all sustained 4th class and secure low fifth.

Once at the low bivy of the north ridge, the clouds again threatened us. So we sat and weighed our options. We ended up watching the clouds for an hour before deciding our fate. Our original idea was to traverse the glacier and climb the NW face/rib. But whiteout and impending rain steered our decision to "bail" back up the north ridge. Though the north ridge is such a fun knife edge it's hard to complain. We then down climbed the West Ridge. We hit the base of the West ridge 6 hours after starting up the East ridge and made it to the car just before 5, almost 24hrs after we left. The epic rains to come that night validated our decision to limit our time in the mountains on this one.

For those who don't know yet, you no longer need to touch snow to climb either the west or east ridges. The glacier below the cat scratches is more or less completely gone. While sad, it does mean you can do this whole link up in approach shoes without carrying axe/crampons.

Starting up the East Ridge

Headed down the North Ridge, with clouds threatening to spill in from the west.

Headed back up.

[plexus]

 

17 hours ago, Sam Boyce said:

For those who don't know yet, you no longer need to touch snow to climb either the west or east ridges. The glacier below the cat scratches is more or less completely gone.

I have been gone from the area for over 20 years now. But I never thought that this would happen in my lifetime. Rather melancholy about that now.