[TR] Mt. Torment -> Mt. Forbidden- Torment Forbiden Traverse 7/23/2004

[Hal_Burton]

Climb: Mt. Torment -> Mt. Forbidden-Torment Forbiden Traverse

 

Date of Climb: 7/23/2004

 

Trip Report:

Beat the heat by getting high on this stellar alpine ridge yesterday. An excellent scramble with some looseness here and there, but generally the rock is confidence inspiring.

Used Nelson's beta and felt like it worked well. Torment is the red headed step child of the traverse. Very exposed and thought provoking. Its just there to test your mettle.

Rapped to the glacier north of Torm. and over the 'schrund. Rounded the first hump on rock, traversed the snow field under the second hump all the way to the third, and final, major hump. Third hump went via a steep ramp/corner on the west side, one friction move, then scrambling.

From there its straight forward ridge running. Did one more rap along the ridge at a step. Downclimbed some stuff that had slings to rap.

West ridge of Verbotten was nice in that high-traffic-lichen-annihilation-project kind of way.

Descended via NE side raps to sketchy traversing for a while, improving to just scary traversing. Crossed over east ridge and had a sweet boot ski down the snow field to B.Basin.

 

T->F Trav is very spectacular. Nice place to put all your alpine skills to use. (The free hanging rap off a snow bollard was memorable!) The feeling of commitment once past the south face of torment is palpable. Your next place to bail would be the Forbidden west ridge gully (Yum!). I think with snow softening and 'schrund/moat expansion, it would be good to get on this soon. Enjoy!

 

 

Gear Notes:

Axe, 'poons, single trekking pole w/o basket for 2nd tool (thx JoshK!)

30m 8mm rope

100ft of p-cord (for the NE face raps).

 

Approach Notes:

Entrance to Torment south ridge notch is below a wall of lime green lichen high on the ridge. Once on the Taboo, aim for that.

[JoshK]

Cool! Me and partner are hoping to do this early next week for some alpine fun. Looks beautiful. I think we are gonna do two days for the beauty of the high ridge bivy!

 

Glad to hear the trekking pole trick worked out for you!

[goatboy]

 

Here's a look back at Torment from just beyond the difficult bergschrund. May provide helpful beta for folks!

 

We rappelled off the ridge crest down to the glacier, then negotiated the schrund as follows:

 

1) My partner lowered me off of two pickets to the bottom end of the schrund (about 20 feet down, past overhanging ice)

 

2) He then poked all around the schrund, eventually "worming" his way through an ice tunnel and popping up beside me, scaring me half to death . . . .

 

A non-traditional way to deal with it for sure . . . .