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North Cascades: People, Places, and Stories

The video “North Cascades: People, Places, and Stories” is now available. Doug and crew did a superb job.  Some of my footage of Fred Beckey is featured (first six minutes of the video).

Forbidden Peak – East Ridge Direct

Daniel and I hiked up to Boston Basin in late October of 2005.  It was a super crisp clear day, one of the clearest I’d seen.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to last.  Even though there were good sunrise views of Johannesburg as we were getting ready to climb, clouds had moved in and had begun to rapidly descend  over Forbidden Peak.  We scrambled up snow-covered talus for over an hour hoping that the clouds would part, but it never happened.  We descended and vowed to return the following year for a day-climb of the route.

We returned in early July, this time accompanied by Daniel’s brother Mark and Ari Lazier.  We planned on doing it in a day so decided to at least bivy on the picnic tables at the Cascade Pass parking lot.  I don’t recall exactly when we got up, but we hit the trail in nice daylight around 5:30 in the morning.  I’ve learned to be thankful for nice trails and the trail up to Boston Basin certainly qualifies as “nice trail” and we made quick time up the 3rd class tunnel, past the various stream crossings, the avalanche debris, and so on.  We were in the alpine slopes of Boston Basin in around two hours or so, maybe a little less.  One of the niceties of the east ridge is that you don’t have to deal with anything like the couloir on the way to the route.  At the base of the route, we roped up and I volunteered to take the first pitch.  I figured that I’d lead the first few pitches and Daniel would finish off the last few.  Well, I ended up leading the whole thing which was fine with me.

The climb is consistently 5th class, unlike the west ridge.  In fact, this route is not just “a little harder” than the west ridge, it’s a good bit harder.  Last year, I think we climbed the west ridge in 30 minutes or so, basically two simul pitches.  The east ridge is more serious and sustained.  None of the pitches are really “hard”, but they require care.  Being riddled with gendarmes, the climb is subject to rope drag and I wore my shoulders out by hauling in two lines on each belay.

There’s a nice section of knife-edged ridge mid-way along the route.  It was easily climbed by hand-traversing on the south side of the ridge.  Both Ari and Mark, despite being super strong rock climbers, were relatively new to alpine climbing and were raving pitch after pitch.  The east ridge was a perfect intro.

Somewhere after the knife edge pitch was the second crux of the climb – a vertical wall on the north side of another gendarme on the ridge that leads to a small notch.  At the notch, I was back on the ridge proper and climbed the gendarme, then descended – more rope drag.  The short wall crux wasn’t as technical as the true crux near the end of the climb, but it’s a good bit more exposed.

There’s the option to climb a gendarme right before the crux and then rappel down to the crux belay.  We had some rain hit us on the middle of the ridge with more weather threatening and since the gendarme climb was only twenty feet or so, we bypassed it on the right to the base of the crux.  I offered the lead to Daniel, but he was happy just to let me keep going.  OK, no problem.  The pitch is a Cascade classic – it’s technical and easy to protect.  I pulled up on small crimpers to a huge horn that I was able to throw a sling around.  I pulled up one more move and realized I was at the 5.8 move – an overhanging section of wall with small features.  To the left was a perfect finger crack which took a small nut beautifully.  The protection was perfect and I pulled through the short moves to a jug where I let my feet catch some air high above the northeast face.  What a great feeling.  I think Daniel said that was his favorite pitch out in the mountains.  That saying somethin’.

All that remained now was a simul-pitch of 5.2 ridge.  Some more weather moved in and the clouds dropped around Eldorado and Boston, but Forbidden remained clear, although, I was now leading in swirling mist that only added to the awesome alpine ambience.  The summit was ours and we hung out and ate for a bit before heading down the east ledges.  We made 6 rappels, if I recall and then headed across the ledges.  We broke up into two rope teams.  I headed out first and placed gear as we simul-climbed.  Daniel unclipped the gear and left it for the second team who re-clipped and then cleaned.  Happy to be back at the ridged, we put on our hiking boots and headed down the slopes to Boston Basin.  We got back to the cars after dark, didn’t see anyone else all day.

Eldorado Peak – East Ridge, II

Aidan always wanted to do Eldorado.  I wanted to do Eldorado and have some views.  We both wanted something not to hard to get into shape with and have a good time.  The weekend that we headed out was absolutely roasting.  It suddenly seemed that summer had come to the Cascades with a ferocity.  We brought a light glacier rope and a bit of rock pro ’cause we thought we’d also be doing Dorado Needle.  In fact, that was the purpose of the trip.  Dorado Needle and then a quick run up Eldorado.  We eventually settled on climbing Eldorado the first day, late in the afternoon.  Head out to Dorado Needle the next day and out.  Well, our wimpy fitness dictated otherwise.

Well, the stream crossing is a piece of cake now.  There’s a tree that lies across the entire creek with branches sticking out that serve as a makeshift banister.  We enjoyed a minute or two of level hiking then suddenly the trail ascended unrelentingly through the forest.  I’d forgotten how steep this trail is.  In fact, I’d forgotten how relatively difficult the approach to Eldorado is.  It’s certainly a lot harder than Boston Basin.  I’m sure our fitness and the hot sun weren’t helping.  In the talus field, it felt that I couldn’t escape from the sun beating down on me, draining my energy.  Finally at the stream crossing we had a brief reprieve where we had a quick lunch.  Higher up, it was odd to see a couple other parties on the trail as well.  Seems like we never see anyone else on the trail.  I had to remind myself that Eldorado is very popular.  The hike up to the Inspiration Glacier was uneventful, but the views were outrageous.  We both were dragging by the time we were taking the last steps to reach the large flat plateau on the glacier south of Eldorado Peak.

We talked briefly with a party camping on the edge of the Inspiration Glacier, the same spot that I had camped with Ken three years before.  We’d heard of good campsites in the rocks along the base of the east ridge and decided to head there.  There were two other tents on a rock outcropping below the east ridge but we pushed higher up and found a nice spot within short sight of the summit.  Unfortunately, neither us had the energy at the moment to go for the summit.  Also, the rest we needed meant that we probably wouldn’t have enough decent light to make a summit attempt, at least one where we’d have good views.  So we both hung out and ate.  I kinda figured that we’d just do Eldorado tomorrow and head out – we were both complaining about our knees too.  Dang!

A good night sleep saw us ready to attempt the peak.  Actually, we slept quite late.  Being the longest weekend of the year, we slept a good three hours past sunrise (I think we got up a little before 7am).  We headed up, not bothering to rope up and eventually arrived at the base of the summit ridge.  There were two parties up there and we decided to wait for them to descend.  Seemed like we waited a long time, but it didn’t matter; we had plenty of time.  We wandered around to a rock outcropping at the end of a short snow finger on the north side where we had good views down into Marble Creek cirque.  Early Morning Spire and Dorado Needle both looked inviting, although we were treating the trip with too much leisure to go for Dorado Needle.  While we were waiting, a yellow plane buzzed by – Scurlock was in the ‘hood!  I took some video of the plane flying by.  Eventually, we got our chance at the summit ridge.

The summit ridge was a piece of cake and I had video camera in hand, filming the entire way up.  It was a nice day, a little windy, but clear.  I got great cell phone reception but for some reason I couldn’t get any rings.  Oh well.  We headed back to camp and took a long nap in the sun.  I didn’t mind being a little lazy on this trip.  We headed back around 11:30.  As soon as we hit the talus field, the sun was really doing its work on me again.  Ug, I felt so drained.  My knees were really starting to hurt too.  Dang, this wasn’t a good auspice for the following week, when we would tentatively be out in the wild for a full week (we postponed the trip and I’ve been wearing a knee brace, which has helped a lot).  Because of my knee, Aidan hiked out much faster than me, but waited for me now and then.  We both arrived back at the creek together where Aidan suggested a quick plunge.  Why not.  We sat down in the middle of the frigid creek and leaned back dunking ourselves in.  Cold and refreshing.