Forbidden, West Ridge

[Mic_Rocky]

Anybody been up to Forbidden lately? I'm thinking about doing the West Ridge this weekend and was looking for any beta on the conditions of the approach from Boston Basin and the West Ridge couloir.

[dberdinka]

I did the Torment-Forbidden traverse last weekend, so I can only tell you what I saw. Coulior is melted out and very ugly. However the glacier can be crossed at its top from the east edge (saw 2 doing this) or you could skirt it to the west as well. From the rock promitory at the base of the coulior there is an easy rock gully to climbers left that can be followed to the west ridge notch. Just make sure you pick the farthest gully to the west (look for slings) Without any snow the descent down the east side sucked, lots of scree and dirt covered slabs.

[flyingkiwi1]

I climbed the West Ridge Sunday. The glacier's pretty broken up; I opted to circle below, approaching high and from the west. Thus, I gained the rock west of the couloir. I climbed a black dike for about 40' before traversing slightly left, then back right to gain the gully that dberdkinka mentions. This worked okay climbing down as well, although there is one move on the black dike (about 20' above the glacier) that might rate on a par with the hardest move on the ridge (the move around the piton two-thirds of the way up).

Another party on the route that day took the couloir; they reported 5.9 climbing down there.

-- fk