[TR] Mt Torment - The South ridge, the house of pain 9/2/2012

[ivan]

thought nelson gave it a v? was craig the guide-dude who was killed by falling snow blocks just a coupla years ago? fucking torment, no way it's worth getting the chop over! like a fat-chick's father shotgunning ya for smiling at her funny...

[Buckaroo]

You know that moat on your descent is where Craig Luebben died, right? I haven't had many free hanging rappel sections in the mountains, I thought that was fairly gnarly for descending a class 4 route (isn't that what Fred rates it?)

 

Yes, and pretty sure this is the ice block in question, it fits the description.

 

Craig Luebben article on Climbing

 

 

Approaching the moat for the SE face in late season would be really dangerous also. In places it's overhanging and you can't see it on the approach, you have to climb up and look over the edge.

 

the rock was definitely steep and blank on the last rap.

 

 

[mhux]

Just read this TR linked from the more recent one...considering two friends and myself tried this last october (the 6th), I thought I'd chime in.

We were hoping for good late season conditions, but found the south ridge access melted out, so we opted for the SE face...after endrunning the berg to climbers right, we continued up the snow cone to some loose rock to get into rock shoes...testing our luck under the big ice block the whole time. Some sketchy '5.easy ++' took us up onto the face (which was shitty and loose- you rapped it so you must know), and to the summit.

We rapped the SE face, and like you, ended up at the same last rap station...except the glacier was a little more melted out, so we ended up in the sloping ramp with a marginal anchor, peering down to the abyss below us (yikes...). Getting out involved traversing the slab to a screw in the berg wall, managing to put crampons on without dropping them, and climbing ~15 feet out to the top. The rest was easy...like you guys we felt a big load off our shoulders once we were off the Taboo! Good to hear of another attempt that got interesting....anyway I'm planning to do this in a week, I think the S ridge up and hopefully Forbidden down might work better

[YocumRidge]

The snow finger leading to South ridge is melting fast this year, but it surely seems the quickest option of all to get up Torment. Don't downclimb/rap from the summit to the "grassy Cl.3 ledges" on SE face - that really sucked! Instead, try to sidehill from the U-notch to the rap station for the north side.