[TR] Torment Forbidden Traverse 7/30/2016

[Daphne H]

Trip: Mount Torment and Forbidden Peak - Torment Forbidden Traverse

 

Date: 7/30/2016

 

Trip Report:

We completed the traverse in two days on July 30-31. I had difficulty finding recent condition reports when preparing for the trip, so wanted to share some information here.

 

We arrived at the glacier at about 11:30am on Saturday morning, a ridiculously warm day even at that elevation. The glacier crossing was pretty mellow - a few crevasses and a moat at the notch, but these were easily navigable. The snow was pretty soft and slushy (maybe due to the time of day) so crampons were not absolutely necessary, but nice to have.

 

Glacier Crossing

 

Crevasses

 

We used Steph Abegg's trip report and topos for route finding, and they were spot on. From the summit of Torment, we dropped about 30m down the south face to some grassy ledges, and then traversed east towards the large, noticeable notch. From the notch, there are two rap anchors. Using the anchors to the east allows you to rappel across the large moat below, avoiding having to climb out of it.

 

Rappelling into the moat

 

From here, we downclimbed / rappelled past a bergschrund. There were numerous open crevasses below, but again, easily navigable.

 

Bergschrund

 

From here, we traversed to the east again, towards the ledge system, which was slightly snow covered but not icy (again, likely due to the warm weather and time of day). We climbed up towards the snow patch, and were able to walk around the snow rather than through it. This led us to the steep snow section of the traverse. This was again, in very good condition. The snow was stable and bootpack from a previous party was visible.

 

 

From the saddle, we dropped down to the south again, towards another series of grassy ledges. These ledges brought us past two snow patches to an excellent bivy spot on the south side of the ridge. A headwall to the north and several rock barriers around the site protected us from the wind, and we had a great view into Boston Basin. We decided to settle here for the night, just a bit more than halfway through the traverse. The site comfortably fit three of us, and likely would have had room for another party.

 

Route we took to the bivy site

 

View from Bivy

 

Note that water was very difficult to find on the route until this point. We had figured that we'd be able to fill up while on the glacier on the north of the ridge; however, there wasn't a lot of easily accessible snow melt. We actually weren't able to refill our water until the first snow patch on the south side of the ridge, after the steep snow traverse, so plan accordingly or be prepared to melt snow while on the glacier.

 

We started the next morning at about 8am, and the remainder of the route was an enjoyable scramble to Forbidden Peak, with the ridge widening into the "sidewalk in the sky". At this point, we found a set of rappel anchors, and rappelled off the south side to (more) grassy ledges. From here, we traversed east until we reached the notch that starts the west ridge of Forbidden.

 

Although the west ridge route generally stays to the north of the ridge, we climbed slightly to the south of the ridge or right on top of it, and found that the friction was amazing / moves were generally 4th to low 5th class. As noted by several trip reports prior to mine, the general theme was, if the terrain got too difficult, generally stepping off to the north helped ease the terrain off a bit.

 

The ridge was entirely socked in to the south

 

From the summit of Forbidden, we downclimbed / made a few rappels on the north side of the route. Once we got back down to the notch, we downclimbed the gully about 30m, until we found the first rappel anchors skier's right. From there, the majority of the anchors were on skiers left of the gully. I would estimate that no rappel went more than 20m, and the majority of them were quite a bit shorter, about 10m. The final rappel before you drop off into the snow (so second to last rappel) is a bit of a rope stretcher, and we had to downclimb the last few moves of the gully, so beware of that if you have a 60m rope.

 

The descent on the snow was fine - there were a few areas where running water had exposed the rock face underneath, but the descent was simple and crampons were not used.

 

Glacier on the descent from Forbidden Peak

 

Some additional pictures from the traverse:

 

 

Forbidden Peak from the summit of Torment

 

Sunrise from Bivy

 

Summit selfie!

 

 

Gear Notes:

60m 8.5mm rope

12 alpine draws

2 ice screws (not used)

single rack to #3

single set of nuts (not used)

Ice axe and crampons

Edited August 3, 2016 by Daphne H

[JasonG]

Nice work! I'm glad the hats made it the whole way, it was fun to see you guys starting up the trail.

 

Did you have to rap off a bollard to clear the 'schrund on the north side of Torment?

[olyclimber]

and more importantly, was there a Pokestop up there?

[flynclimbhigh]

What did you guys use for footwear? What type of boots/crampon/climbing shoe/approach shoe setup?

[Daphne H]

Two of us used hiking / approach shoes and the third used mountaineering boots (he was expecting to have to kick steps, as we'd recently read a report where the climbers mentioned that they had to do some front pointing). My crampons were strap ons (BD neves) and worked just fine. I think mountaineering boots would have been overkill for me, but that would depend on the snow conditions / weather.

 

My friend in the mountaineering boots used them for the entire route. I climbed Torment and Forbidden in climbing shoes and did the remainder of the ridge in my boots, and feel that I could have done the entire route in boots.

[Daphne H]

and more importantly, was there a Pokestop up there?

 

we heard there was one in the schrund, but none of us were willing to rap in to confirm.

[Daphne H]

Nice work! I'm glad the hats made it the whole way, it was fun to see you guys starting up the trail.

 

Did you have to rap off a bollard to clear the 'schrund on the north side of Torment?

 

Nice running into you guys

 

my friend is pretty comfortable on snow so built an ice axe anchor for us to rappel off of, and then downclimbed while on belay. I heard there is tat somewhere that you can rappel off of, but I couldn't find it.

[Marcus Russi]

I think those tracks on the snow traverse were ours from a couple weeks ago. The tat is perhaps 10m to the east of where you first touch down on the snow from the rappel off Torment's notch. It would be an involved affair to reach it if you were already on the snow, we went with a bollard.

[Priti]

Way to keep it fun! Love it!