Forbidden Peak-South Face

[mneagle]

We climbed the south face of Forbidden yesterday. Both upper and lower camp sites are snow free. Crampons but no axes required for glacier, which we walked right up the middle without a rope. No 'shrund to speak of and the moat hasn't opened up yet. The right side is seeing a lot of ice and stone fall, so we went up the left side. Once past the roofs, the routefinding is pretty tough. We intended on doing the direct, but drifted left and ended up doing the 1968 route, ending up on the west ridge with one long pitch of simulclimbing to the summit. THe route was dry all the way up. There were some spooky 5.9 moves on 3-4 different pitches that were pretty tough while carrying a pack with boots and crampons; the rest was 5.5 to 5.7. The descent route back to the east ridge is also snow free. Keep an eye out for the cairne marking the path to the right off the rappels, it's about 40 feet below the single red runner. We brought a rack of 10 cams to 3" Camalot and a set of small stoppers and that felt pretty good. The Marblemount Ranger Station is giving out 6 backcountry permits per day and there were only 2 other parties on Boston Basin the days we were there.