Forbidden Peak East Ridge 09/20/2014
We decided to climb Forbidden Peak East Ridge on the weekend of September 20-21 2014. The forecast for North Cascade was very good. We originally wanted to approach to Boston Basin on Saturday and climb the mountain on Sunday. Our friend could not leave on Friday night and we started on Saturday at 4:45am from Redmond in order to get to Marblemount at 7 to try to get a permit. We got to the ranger station at 7 as planned only to discover that all of the available permits were taken on Friday. We quickly discussed our options and decided to try to climb the route in a day. We got to Boston Basin trailhead at 8:15 and started hiking at 8:30. As the start was late we needed to be fast. My friends ran ahead and I tried to catch up with them heavily puffing.
On a grassy moraine we somehow lost the trail and traversed directly through alpine vegetation to the beginning of the slabs. We scrambled on the slabs heading to the unnamed glacier mentioned in the Nelson’s guidebook.
Crossing several snow patches, we got closer to the ridge keeping right from the heavily broken glacier tongue.
There we looked at the gullies and discussed which one to take to gain the ridge. Finally we decided to take the rightmost wide gully. The snow in the gully was firm, but not steep. My friends climbed in boots and I put my crampons on.
After the snow, an easy scramble led us to the broad col on a ridge before the first gendarme. It was 12:30. We looked at the gully on the right side which we should climb from East Ledges on a way back. We left our crampons and boots, roped up and started climbing at 1:00.
The climbing was airy and exposed, but not hard. We climbed in 2 roped teams, simul-climbing most of the time. We did not bypass any of the gendarmes, but climbed them straight. 5.7 crack and flake section brought us on top of "pitch 5" gendarme. Next was a short rappel about 20 feet which is not mentioned in Nelson guidebook.
Leading the 5.8 section I climbed over the flake to the left and found an awkward unprotected slab below the roof. John led the second rope and climbed straight up the slightly overhanging, but protected roof.
We arrived at the summit at 4:00 climbed the ridge in 3 hours. The views of the North Cascades were stunning. There was not a single cloud in the sky.
Though we had 2 ropes, we decided to rappel on a single rope to avoid rope drag. There were rappel stations on every half rope. We almost missed the 4th station, it was behind a rock. The rappel line goes almost vertically down. There were some slings on a small ridge on a climber’s left, but you don’t need to go there, just keep rappelling down looking for the stations.
After the 5th rappel we reached East Ledges. We traversed the ledges counting 5 ridges and correctly found our ascend gully. We were back at the col at 5:50.
At 6:10 we started downclimbing the gullies, then the slabs. There were several parties camping in Boston Basin. We hit the main stream crossing during dusk at 7:50. Hiking in the dark with headlamps we arrived at the trailhead at 9:15. 12 hours and 45 minutes car to car – not a bad time. Fantastic day!
