CascadeAdventures.info

Johannesburg Mountain

We picked the hottest weekend of the year to climb Johannesburg.  But, what was more important was that we chose a weekend with a perfect forcast.  Good choice – I would never want to be stuck up on this route in bad weather.  After climbing this dubious route on this monster mountain, the words of Robert hearken back:  <paraphrasing> “Every Cascade climber should experience Johannesburg – but just once”.  I’m proud I finished the climb and I’ll never do this one again.  The upper part of the climb was asoundingly alpine and the thought of imagining myself in such an outrageous setting only added to the grandeur.  The lower buttress, on the other hand, was atrocious, with its continuous steep and brushy cliffs.  On top of that, protection is sparse.  The safest part of the climbing is in the dense timber where you can sling big tree branches clinging onto cliffs.  The cliffs themselves are exceptionally stingy with protectable spots.

We drove up Friday evening for a car camp at the Cascade Pass trailhead.  A few weekends earlier on a climb up Sahale and Boston basin, we had to hike the road three extra miles to this location.  Thankfully, it was fixed now.  If you wish to climb Johannesburg, the least you can do is allow yourself the luxury of a 20 minute hike to the base of the climb.  We pulled into the moderately crowded parking lot late and set up our sleeping bags on level picnic tables.

I awoke the following morning and looked over to Michael’s table to see no one there.  Where’d he go?  A rustle of the grass behind me caused me to turn where Michael approached with a big smile.  The “Calm Before the Storm”, I called it.  We both knew we’d be in for an exceptionally strenous day.  We set off by walking around to the point in the road that was closest to the snow runnoff from the Cascade-Johannesburg (CJ) couloir, downclimbed to the small creek and up over talus to the snow.  We saw another party in front of us, intent upon the buttress as well.  There’s a prominent snow finger that appears to easily access the buttress, but it’s unfortunately surrounded by large moats.  Not finding the potential jump savory, we found a preferable crossing above it.  A simple jump, accompanied by a distinct sense of one-way, got us on the route.  “So it begins”.  We set off as the other team belayed each other up onto the route.

We traversed along steep ledges.  Almost immediately though, the brush and direct steepness starts.  We climbed a long section of it unroped, allowing us to get a lot of space between the other party who were still belaying below.  The climbing quickly became too steep for unroped climbing and we stopped to rectify the problem.

Our first goal was to get up to a prominent snowpatch that marked a distinct point where you could either take the western or eastern variation on the Northeast Buttress.  Our plan was to take the western variation.  A lot of ground lay between us and the snowpatch though.  Looking back, the scariest climbing was certainly on the lower part of the buttress before the snowpatch.  At one point, after a few pitches of steep brushy climbing where we adopted the habit of grasping at branches and bushes to help us up, we entered a brushy gully with a rocky bottom where we could cover ground more quickly.  I recall wearing my leather gloves for sections of the gully where I was breaking devils club to clear a way and using the lower branches as handholds.  We continued to follow this gully steeply up.  Occasional 5th class moves allowed us to gain shelves where we could see ahead.  The angle only increased.  Michael led one pitch up that turned out to be too steep.  A dicey lower off a sling fastened around a shrub prompted us to turn left and exit the gully.  There was virtually no protection here and the natural protection, the brush, was spotty at best.  To the left, we could enter timber.  After leading us out of the gully and up on border of the gully, Michael took off for a pitch that eventually opened up into thick huckleberry bushes on moderate ground.  A hundred yards or so through the brush deposited us at the welcomed snowfield where we took our first break.

We sat and drank longingly for at least thiry minutes.  Then, I led off for the western rib variation.  There was a rocky cliff in front of us that looked a little intimidating.  “More sketchy terrain”, I thought.  Actually, it was quite easy; we headed to the right and traversed horizontally and then headed up through several steep timber pitches.  These pitches were mostly jungle gym style climbing where most of the holds were branches.  Protection was thanfully very easy.  All you needed was a handy sling.  There were more than enough stout branches to choose from.  We climbed and swung our way up the near vertical forest.  Michael ended up leading a pitch that took us up a cliff for about one hundred feet that then exited right into dead vertical thick brush.  This short section was the thickest brush of the entire climb and was almost like swimming.  Taking the dive was exiting the rock and clinging onto branches for dear life and pulling and tugging ourselves into and upward through the brush.  Many of the large branches grew straight down and we climbed them much as one climbs, or tries to climb, a rope.  Michael brought me up to a belay spot in the trees.  I took over and headed further to the right, trending up slightly.  I suddenly emerged onto the long-awaited heather slopes.

While the heather wasn’t an end to the thick brush, it was at least a different (and preferred) type of brush.  We were done with the devils club and the sappy branches.  After another break where we reapplied sunscreen and took in the views, we headed up.  The rock tower above us, where our bivy site lay, looked close.  However, it was much further away than it appeared.  We put away the rope for this section and wended our way up and around.  The steep heather and non-stop 3rd and 4th class scrambling didn’t relent.

The heather slowly started to give way to rock.  Our next target was the titanium pin that marked the potential rappel into the gully.  After a short knife edge section on solid rock, for which we roped up, we arrived at the titanium pin.  There were some old but reliable slings left here as well which we promptly claimed (we’d use them on rappels the next day).  Slings are valuable on this climb.  Our original plans called for going left instead of rappelling down into the gully on the right.  One look at the awful gully confirmed this.

Around the left was the “rotten chimney” as described in the “Selected Climbs” book.  Well, this was one “5.3″ that would stump us.  So, we went further left.  Michael accomplished this by a delicate move around a devious corner.  The pitch was short and I carefully swung myself around the exposed corner.  Some steep and exposed climbing got me up to the belay.  I led on up a steep step where I had to dig out a small handhold for my right hand.  Once on this, I moved left and trended upward.  Again, Johannesburg exhibited the dubious distinction of revealing little protection and I suddenly found myself on sloping ledges with nothing for protection.  Not happy at this prospect and realizing the downclimb would be worse, I carefully climbed up to another ledge where I thanked my maker for an anomolous horn on which I could place a reliable sling.  Higher up, I belayed Michael and then he left for the final two pitches that would lead us to the snowfield and our camp.  We pulled into camp at around 7:45.  I recognized it from some of Robert’s pictures.  Finally!  We took the time to have some dinner, clean up in the small snowmelt stream and let the anxieties of the day wash away.  The worst of the climb was over.

Michael woke up too early the following morning (5am) and goaded me to get up.  Arrr…  At least I’d slept solidly despite my concerns that the ground wasn’t entirely level.  I was worried about the exposure on the snow arete on the upcoming glacier section of the climb.  Although the pictures I’d seen of it looked reasonable, I read about “calm nerves required” and “exposure” and so on.  Well, it turned out to be quite an easy and enjoyable climb up the glacier.  I’d insisted on bringing pickets along but Michael had forgotten to pack his.  And, what’s worse, I’d left mine back at the car (and I realized after shortly getting on the climb the day before!).  Ah well, turns out pickets weren’t needed at all.  The snow arete was picturesque and alpine.  It was easy enough where my mind could wander and I could appreciate my location.  Beyond that, near the crevasses, we roped up.  A short and moderately steep headwall led us to level ground.  To our left was a large wall of ice which we comfortably passed under.  The exposure over the right side led to an ice fall, but the route never exposed us to that.  We continued to the opposite side of the glacier under the ice wall and hooked all the way back to the opposite side of the glacier once again before beginning the final bit of steep snow to a snow tongue between to towers, the right one being the true summit.

I was initially a little worried about the steep snow.  Something about steep Cascade snow lately has had me a little nervous.  Anyway, this too turned out to be quite easy.  I led out and ice axe placements were generously deep.  Michael swung out under me to lead the final piece of the snow tongue.  We entered the moat on the left side.  I felt snug between rock and snow.  At the top, we finally had the view southward to the Ptarmigan Traverse peaks and Glacier Peak.  We kept the rope on for the last bit to the summit and dumped everything else (except the cameras of course).  The pitch to the summit was easy – no rope required.  We arrived on top a couple of minutes later, about eight in the morning.

The summit register contained four rotten pages dating back to the mid eighties.  We found Robert and Jesse’s signatures as well as Colins.  Michael recognized other names as well.  I really enjoyed the rest up here.  I wasn’t as worried about the descent as I was the ascent.  We started off for what would be a long, arduous, but reasonable endeavour.  The first part was easy enough, albeit tedious.  We stayed on the south side of the ridge, maybe 100 feet below the top at most, on relatively comfortable ledges.  We crossed numerous ribs and gullys.  Once we topped out on the ridge and enjoyed a short thrilling walk on comfortable sidewalks in the sky.

We passed above a steep snowfield (I refused to climb any super steep snow aretes up here) and then further down along more ledges.  The descent became more difficult to follow and we had to start scouting ways around steep towers.  Eventually, this led to about 7 steep rappels with occasional 3rd class downclimbing to get to the CJ couloir.

On most of the rappels, we couldn’t see the next rappel station, if there was one.  So, we spent lots of time looking left and right seeking out horns where we could place a rappel sling or the reassuring sign where someone else had placed one.  Once down to the couloir’s top, we felt very happy and relieved.  We were officially off of Johannesburg and all that remained now was finding “Doug’s Direct” route over Mixup Peak to the Cache Glacier.  First things were first though – we bounded down the gentle snowfield and made for a large boulder that marked an “idyllic brook where one could reconstitute oneself.”  Reconstitute we did.  We drank our fills and our cups ranneth over.  The break was welcomingly long and relaxing.

We traversed grassy slopes past Cascade Peak and the Triplets to the backside of Mixup Peak.  From here, we were able to put together landmarks seen from above to devise a plan that would get us to the suspected spot where Doug’s Direct lay.  There were three prominent snowfields on the left side of the peak that we would keep to the right of.  Steep heather slopes and mixed rock would get us to the ridge.  On the steep heather, we occasionally used our ice axe picks to dig into the roots and secure us.  We eventually moved onto firm rocks and scrambled our way to the top.  “How’s it look?”, yelled Michael when I topped out on the ridge.  “This will work!”, I responded.  I almost couldn’t believe it, but it appeared that this fabled “Doug’s Direct” existed as reported and would indeed save us the tedious and treacherous route over Gunsight Notch.

Mixup Peak is a long trending ridge with the summit being on the southeastern end.  Doug’s Direct is almost on the opposite northwestern end.  So, unfortunately, we couldn’t tag another summit just for fun.  No matter, it was enough to see that the descent would be a 3rd and maybe 4th class scramble to the top of the Cache Glacier.  While snacking on our last food, we spotted a lone traveller on the glacier approaching Cache Col, a little ant of a man.  I almost preferred to just rappel this terrain so we wouldn’t have to do any real thinking.  But, I yielded and we downclimbed to entire route to the glacier.  It went easily with only a few more careful moves.  We strapped on crampons for the last time at the top of the glacier.  While not steep, this location was thin and slick.  We then marched down the glacier and as the terrain became more firm, my energy increased substantially.  I suppose this jolt could be credited to a peaceful mind that knew that all the difficulties were over.  The remaining hike out was pleasant, and we’d have plenty of sun as well.  We took one last break at Cascade Pass set against the whoopings of hidden grouse somewhere in the foliage.  On the way down from Cascade Pass we ran into some goats – a mother and kid who opted not to move aside for us; we did instead.

Mount Stuart-North Ridge

Michael and I planned on doing Mount Stuart’s classic North Ridge last year, but fires had closed access to the trailheads and thus we ended up going to West McMillan Spire.  Stuart would wait another year.  For a trip that had been discussed for a long time, it certainly began in a chaotic fashion. At the last minute, we ditched our weekend plans for a climb due to weather and opted to take off a Wednesday the following week where the weather window seemed to be at its best. We left later than planned on Tuesday afternoon but were soon on our way. Our original intent was to do the full ridge from the Mountaineers Creek trailhead but we dashed those plans again at the last minute when we thought the Sherpa glacier would be to difficult to descend. So, the plan was set during the drive out for an approach from Ingalls Pass.  Maybe that would work out well for us; every time I’ve been up Mountaineers Creek (three times), I’ve had cloudy weather.  Every time I’ve been up Ingalls Pass (once), I’ve had good weather. Ingalls Pass is now two for two.

On the way out, Michael made a quick stop at Albertsons to buy food for the trip. For dinner, he had some fried chicken which he kindly shared a tasty breast. We were soon on our way up Ingalls Pass and on to Ingalls Lake where we decided to ultimately camp. We’d talked about Stuart Pass or Goat Pass, but Ingalls Lake was definitely the best with its abundant supply of water and numerous choices for camping. Actually, you’re not allowed to camp at the lake, the sites we used were on rock a hundred or two yards from the lake. Thanks to the chicken down at the car, there was no need to bring cooking gear in. We had a small dessert and turned in.

4:15 came too soon for me (as always). But we packed up quickly (the quick packing job is key for an upcoming story regarding food) and were headed out by 4:45. The morning promised to be clear and warm. In the distance, we could see Glacier Peak in the sunrise. The trail dropped us down along the edges of a meadow then brought us steeply back up to the ridge and Stuart Pass. The trip over to Goat Pass went without a hitch and we were soon getting good looks at the north ridge of Stuart. Our trip to Goat Pass had taken much shorter than we had anticipated. We stopped to take a break and as I began digging in the top of my pack I uttered a disappointed, “Uh oh.” Michael was naturally startled and instantly worried since I have been known to forget important items from time to time. “I think I left my food back at camp”, I said. So, for the rest of the day, I shared Michael’s food. Well, at least I didn’t forget rock shoes, harness, or something like that. The climb would obviously continue.

We spotted another party at the bivy site on the Stuart Glacier and some steep but easy traversing on the Stuart Glacier brought us to the friendly folk. One had climbed the ridge five times, but never the Great Gendarme. We continued past them and got to the base of the ridge and decided that we’d better try to load up on water here. We found a good stream in a moat a hundred feet up the glacier that was easily retrieved. We then traversed along the top of the moat to the snow tongue that led to the ridge. The climb up was easy; I was thankful for the nice cup steps. The rock portion was rated 4th class, but in my suspicious eyes, it felt like easy 5th class to me. Up on the ridge, around 8 in the morning, the wind greeted us. We donned rock shoes and Michael headed off for the first pitch. The plan was to simul climb for as long as we could so that we’d have plenty of time to tackle the Great Gendarme.

The first pitch started out typical enough, but not classic: Moving along blocky exposed ledges, swinging around wide corners of 3rd and 4th class terrain. The first 5.7 pitch started as an “open book” complete with small grassy ledges. “Hey, this reminds me of something like the West Face of Sloan Peak. I want to get to the good stuff”, I thought to myself. Well, above the open book, Michael belayed me up and I got a look at some nice golden granite. I headed out for my turn at the lead. The climbing was still easy, mostly 4th class, until I got to a steep step. I brought Michael around a large corner to prevent rope drag and he then belayed me up the steep section. It was much fun, maybe rated 5.7 as well, I suppose. Beyond this, I could cover lots of ground. The terrain then turned to beautiful, super-clean, gray granite. We cruised along big solid granite flakes until I ran out of slings and brought Michael up and under a short Tarzan move to lead the third simul-climbing pitch.

The third pitch was a classic, maybe the best (along with the 4th) climbing on the entire route. After a short offwidth section, the pitch became a long, steep, and exposed hand traverse. The most difficult part of the traverse only lasted for 150 feet or so then gave way to more moderate and enjoyable clean granite flakes. For the most part, the route followed the crest of the ridge and both sides fell away steeply – to the left, the Ice Cliff Glacier and to the right, the Stuart Glacier.

I don’t remember where the 3rd pitch ended and the 4th began, but the great terrain continued. The 4th pitch was the longest, I believe. At this point, I was having so much fun and feeling so confident that I was placing gear very sparsely. At the top of a tall tower, I downclimbed and arrived at the famous slab with the large crack. The slab was low angle and felt really easy. We cruised up it to the top of another tower where a downclimb brought us to the famous spot where the pictures are taken – the 5.7 hand traverse. OK, I need to place a piece of gear so I found an excellent cam placement and moved past the traverse to a delicate downclimb to a huge fractured slab that led up to the base of the Great Gendarme. I think I only had two more pieces of gear to use on this long stretch but I was able to find temporary homes for them. At the base of the gendarme, we had a bit to eat (of Michael’s food), a short rest, and then got ready for the first pitch of the Great Gendarme.

I’ve seen the first pitch of the Gendarme rated 5.8 and 5.9. Well, I thought it was pretty tough in any case! These were stiff ratings, no doubt – Index 5.8 and 5.9.  In fact, the Gendarme completely changes the nature of the climb.  I found it significantly more difficult than anything else on the lower route. The lower pitch consisted of three sections of downward trending liebacks – the kind where gravity can’t help you as much! From below, this pitch looked tough to me and I was glad to let Michael take the lead. It was definitely a strenuous move and Michael, certainly tired from the tribulations, belly flopped his way on to the belay station at the top of the pitch. I’m not a big fan of these liebacks (or offwidths) and had a pretty tough time with it – I was definitely breathing hard. I took one fall when I eagerly stood up too soon to grasp high for a solid horn at the top of the second lieback. Standing up meant my pasted feet had nothing to hold on to and just shot out from under me. OK, well at least I could dangle and rest a while. One more attempt got me to the top.

The marquis pitch of the Gendarme is the second – the offwidth pitch – arrr offwidth!!!  How about a perfect straight handrack?!?  Nope, not this time.  This pitch starts with a delicate rightward traverse off of the small belay tower.  Immediately, the exposure becomes great.  Not surprisingly, I found the offwidth challenging.  If I recall, the edges flared a little bit making a lieback difficult.  I was able to get one successful fistjam early but, being an offwidth, everything else seemed to slip away.  After a few rests, I made it over the initial 10 feet of the crack, the most difficult.  Higher up, the climbing became more reasonable, but still strenuous. We continued a long simul climb off the gendarme over easy terrain to the next 5.9 secion, a wall with a prominent offwidth in the center. Possible routes looked to be the center (the offwidth), to the left (nothing for feet), and a small crack slightly to the right. We chose the small crack. It was another hard 5.9. The crack was small and overhang a bit. I did my best to avoid another awkward crack and transformed the short crack move into a harder face climb. Michael had a good laugh.

Once on top of this, we had only a strecth of mostly 4th class terrain to the summit. There was an occasional 5th class move to keep things fun. At 3pm, we arrived at the top. “Not too bad”, we thought. We were certain we’d be back down to the car before the sun went down. How we underestimated the abject tedium of the Cascadian Couloir!  We walked the same long and tedious steps that we’d taken two months earlier when descending the summit after a climb of the Stuart Glacier Couloir. At least this time we weren’t continually punching through snow. We descended down the false summit again, following rock for as long as we could until we arrived at snow and then front pointed our way down slick snow to the base of the “couloir”. The Cascadian Couloir is a gently sloped and very broad couloir that was devoid of snow except for one patch about a third of the way down. At first, I thought the descent would just be one long slog. It turned out to be that until the trails faded and the sketchy cliffs appeared. Tedious downclimbing, too tedious to even recall here, got us down to solid grass but there was still steep descending to do, at least this time on a trail. Finally, on the Ingalls Creek trail we paused briefly, preparing for the three mile (at least) slog back up to our camp. There would be another 4+ miles after that. OK, this probably won’t be a hike out with light. Our goal was at least to get beyond the lake (the last of the tricky scrambling) before utter darkness moved in.

There’s not much else to tell other than we were really hungry by the time we got up to our camp. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the skeeters down here were vicious!!!  I usually can endure without repellent but this was utterly impossible.  I already had blood splotches all over my shoulders.  I easily could kill three of those damn things with each swat.  With repellent on it seemed like there were hundreds just hovering around me.  Anyway, I wondered if my food was eaten by local critters while we were away. I couldn’t find it when we arrived. “Oh no”, I said to myself again as I checked in my pack one last time, this time to the very bottom. There was my food. “Oops, sorry about that, Michael. Here have a Twix and some Nutella!” See, the problem was that I never pack my food at the very bottom. For some reason, at 4:30 in the morning, I did. Yet another lesson learned!  We succeeded at getting past the lake by the time it got dark and hiked the rest of the way by headlamp. We ended up taking the low trail unfortunately to get us to Ingalls Pass – the low road dropped us down at least 2-300 feet that we had to regain. At Ingalls Pass we took a nice rest before beginning the starry march out. We arrived back at 12:20. Wow, a 20 hour day. It was 9 hours after we’d left the summit! The memories of those clean granite flakes will fortunately stay in my memory much longer than the unpleasant descent. It’s already starting to dissolve!

As a bonus to this climb, two days later, when I took off for a trip back home, I had the pleasure of picking a seat on the north side of the airplane in anticipation of views of the North Cascades.  As we took off, I was able to identify close peaks like Mount Si and The Tooth as well as the usual familiars to the north.  But the piece de resistance was the direct flyover of Mount Stuart where I was able to look straight down on the North Ridge!  I had to really work to suppress my excitement to those around.  “Hey!  I was there just two days ago!”

Sahale Peak,Boston Basin Loop

This is the story of Ken and Dan’s annual trip to the Pacific Northwest for some mountaineering in the Cascade Range.  We wanted to spend the first night in Boston Basin, climb Forbidden Peak the next day, then move camp upwards to the Sahale-Boston Col, climb Sharkfin Tower and Sahale the next day and head out via Sahale Arm back to the car.  I picked up Ken on the earlier flight; Dan hadn’t been able to go standby on that flight but threw his gear on that plane.  I had the privilege of hauling his one super heavy duffel bag; I buckled as I picked it up and tried to haul it off.  Dan showed up a later on a delayed flight and we didn’t get to bed until 1am or so, unfortunately.  The next day we woke up early and drove out under grey clouds to the Marblemount ranger station.  We thought that because it was early on Friday, we’d not have a problem getting a pass.  Well, there were no passes for Boston Basin.  And, to top that, the Cascade Pass Road was closed at the Eldorado parking lot thanks to the heavy fall rains last year. So, we instead got permits for Sahale Arm then Boston Basin.  That would work; we’d just do the trip in reverse.  At the parking lot, we encountered some rangers, one of them seemed an interesting mix of German and American Indian and we later joked about asking to look at our permit with a very dry “Papers please.”

We started up the road, an extra 3+ miles, around 11am, a little despondent that we had this extra burden.  Three and a half miles on an easy road sounds pretty straightforward, and it was.  It was really hot though and I think this extra mileage and elevation really tipped the scales of exhaustion when we pulled into camp the first night.  Two miles up the road we still wondered why the road was closed.  Soon enough though, we saw the numerous holes in the road, sections that were collapsed, and the big machinery that fixes all of it.  In some ways though, it was pretty cool hiking up the road because we were able to pay attention to new scenery that we’re accustom to zipping past on the way in or out.

After a short break at the picnic area at the Cascade Pass parking lot, we put our packs back on and started the climb (again) to Cascade Pass.  The trail to the pass is pleasant and loaded with numerous switchbacks.  I went ahead in front of Ken and Dan intent on getting some video footage as they approached the pass.  By the time I got to the pass, the weather had changed a bit.  It was a lot colder at the pass and a lot of new clouds had moved in.  After a second break, we headed up the last third of the first day – the hike up Sahale Arm to Sahale Arm camp.  The hike up Sahale Arm was awesome – lots of heather and flowers, we saw marmots and ptarmigans, and great views down to Doubtful Lake and up to Johannesburg Peak.  The upper reaches of Sahale, however, were completely engulfed in clouds.

As we climbed into the clouds, the mist started slowly dampening our packs and clothes.  We intently watched our altimeters and we went up the easy talus.  At this point, visibility had literally dropped to 30 feet (I measured).  We got to an obvious ridge at 7600 feet and we knew the camps were nearby.  I scouted to the left and found the public toilet.  Then I scouted to the right and found the first camp, which was occupied.  I yelled, “Hi guys!” to the occupants who answered (turned out to be Rob and Ben who we would share the summit with the next day) and gave me vague directions to where other camps were.  The three of us then headed up to search for a place to sleep.  We spread out and dropped our packs and roamed around.  It was easy to get out of view of each other.  We explored a large rocky area that only revealed a semi level section of snow.  In the mist, I thought I could see another section of rock and I let Ken and Dan know I’d go explore there and I’d either yell that I found something or I’d meet them at the snow platform at the top of the last rocky section.  This new rocky outcropping looked far away but I took a mere 10-15 steps and was suddenly there; distances were completely out of proportion in the mist!  After a couple of minutes, I found a spot and hollered to Ken and Dan who followed my voice down.  We set up camp, ate, and then crashed for ten hours!  It was an exhausting day.

The next day, we tentively opened the fly to see what the day would reveal.  It was clear!  Well, for the most part.  There was lots of blue sky but there were also a whole lot of clouds.  The north Cascade valley was engulfed in a large cloud, Johannesburg moved in and out of clouds, and beyond Sahale Arm, near Forbidden, seemed to be covered in clouds.  But, it was clear above and behind us and we could see the summit of Sahale Peak.  We took our time getting ready and then packed up and headed up with heavy packs.  We wanted to get over Sahale Peak this day and down to Boston Basin.  If we had the time, energy, and weather, we’d also try to climb Sharkfin Tower.  We followed easy snow to the base of the summit tower.  We decided that since we were wearing full packs, we’d rope up for the one pitch to the top.  In normal weather with a light pack or nothing, this would be a thrilling scramble to the top.  I thought maybe I’d go straight up the face and then link up with the lefthand ridge.  This turned out to not be the best choice (there were no good places to protect) and I had to make some delicate moves to get over to the ridge.  Once we got going though, the ridge went quickly and easily.  On the top, we met up with Ben and Rob and we posed for lots of pictures.

By the time we were ready to rappel down the north side of Sahale, the clouds moved in and engulfed the summit.  Sadly, they didn’t leave for the rest of the trip.  On the other side of the summit, the scene wasn’t very cheery – cloudy and misty with unseen exposure over the right side and steep snow on the left.  We roped up and carefully made our way down.  The going wasn’t too bad fortunately.  There was a section where we had to downclimb on polished slabs with our crampons on.  At the base of the slabs, we were able to make a short scramble down to the edge of the glacier.  A short jump put us on our way.  The way through the glacier was straightforward, albeit foggy.

We made quick progress down.  Suddenly, views of Boston Basin started opening up.  We exited the base of the cloud cover and were able to clearly see down into the basin.  This was a relief; we wouldn’t have to search the entire area for the campsites.  The cloud covered went all the way over to Forbidden Peak and hid the summit from us.  Johannesburg, however, was clear.

We made a stop for some food then another to get some glacial water.  Ken then caught a glimpse of someone in the distance walking – that had to be the upper Boston Basin camps.  Cool – we weren’t that far away.  We had to negotiate a couple of steep grassy sections.  Dan’s heavy boots served him well at this point.  Ken and I were a little more unsure in our light leather boots.  We pulled into camp in the afternoon.  Most of the established campsites were still under snow we were told.  We were able to find a nice flat spot though and set our camp up there.  We spent the rest of the day gazing up towards Forbidden that at most revealed the base of the couloir that gave access to the West Ridge.  It looked pretty steep and narrow from our vista.  Most of the time, though, we couldn’t see very far up the slopes of Forbidden.  180 degrees behind us, though, the real view was always available to behold.  Johannesburg looked absolutely gargantuan and terrifying.  We had a leisurely dinner and plenty of time for picture taking.  We set our watches for 4:30 and turned in.

When 4:30 came around, I really didn’t want to stir.  Ken was pretty anxious and got up to look.  “Socked in”, he said.  No!  Well, at least we can sleep a little longer; let’s try again in about two and a half hours.  At 7am we got up again.  I looked out and it was completely socked in.  What luck.  The night before, the rangers had come by checking permits.  We asked for the latest forecast and the confirmed our thoughts – that July 4th would be the best climbing day.  Not so.  It looked like we were out of luck.  Dejected, we lugubriously packed our things up and headed down.  There’s not to much to report on the hike out.  It was pleasant enough and the mist lasted for a lot of elevation.  These clouds certainly weren’t going anywhere today.  We had a couple of fun stream crossings.  We moved quickly; we were suddenly at the avalanche debris that Ken and I had experienced a couple of years before.  This time though, the passage was much more straightforward.  We also figured out where we’d gone wrong in the past.  We dreaded the long road hike out but it turned out to be pretty easy.  Though we didn’t get to climb Forbidden, the trip was still a lot of fun.  We had great views (the ones that chose to reveal themselves) and the experience of going up and over Sahale was really alpine.  I also greatly enjoyed the downtime where we took in the views from our lunch perch on the Quien Sabe glacier and the locale of Sahale Arm and Boston Basin.  We’ll have to return some day for Forbidden.