Gaucho Argentino Posted July 29, 2011 Share Posted July 29, 2011 (edited) Trip: Forbidden - E Ridge - Date: 7/24/2011 Trip Report: We climbed Forbidden with Matt on what it seemed to be a very busy weekend for the W Ridge, but we got the E Ridge almost for ourselves, except for one more party of 2. There is quite a bit of info about this climb in the site, so briefly: From the Boston Basin campsites at around 6400' go up snow where you can go up left to the W ridge gully, or right. On the right there are two gullies, go up the second wider one (was pretty hard snow early in the morning). You'll see the gendarme on your left, go around it and start climbing the ridge. We took a look at the gully to the right of the gendarme thinking on the way back, and it looked nice and dry. The climb is about 4-5 pitches of easy 5.6 / 5.7, lots of fun, very exposed but never dangerous IMO because of the quality of the rock. There is one spot where the ridge is literally a few inches wide, awesome. The last pitch before the easy 5.2 part to the summit, is a spicy 40-50 feet stretch of 5.8 that made things interesting. Matt lead it in great form in what I believe is his hardest pitch in alpine rock, way to go, Buddy... Descent: I think here is where the beta can be useful. We read about 4 rappels and then traverse back on ledges that are not the nicest to traverse. We did two rappels exactly from below the summit, on clear rappel stations climbers right to the first rib you would have to cross on the traverse, but there was not a third... We down climbed about 50 feet traversing climbers left to the next rib, where we saw one more set of slings, down we went, but again at the end of this rappel there was not another station. We set up one, so you'll find some very nice shiny slings there, again traversing while on rappel to the next rib. From there we traversed the next three ribs with half a rope between us leaving only one piece between us just in case, although actually the rock was fairly solid all the way back to the gully bellow the gendarme. Up we scrambled and down we went to camp for a great day in the mountains... Some pics proof we were there :-) Me drinking Argentinean mate with Forbidden in the background Approaching the ridge, quite a beautiful line (gendarme right on top of my helmet)... Enjoying the summit... Matt on the top with N face of Buckner on the background Gear Notes: Standard rack, one set of nuts, one of cams up to a #2 Edited July 29, 2011 by Gaucho Argentino Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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