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.
After a quiet night out on the ridge, I slowly pushed my head out of the bag to see that the sun was coming up. I sat up a little to see Aidan waking up as well. I grabbed the camera and took a couple of shots. Only a few seconds later, the sun popped over the mountains and started heating up our alpine pad. After a leisurely breakfast, we strapped on the ‘pons and headed down the snow slopes. At a small crevasse, we started turning up the steep snow. There were tracks to follow. Not that it made much difference, but at least we didn’t have to put in the complete effort of kicking new steps. The snow was easy and was great to get us back on the ridge in a short amount of time. From here, it was 3rd and 4th class ridge running on the crest for a half mile at least.
At another gendarme, the climbing steepened and the exposure increased. We opted to rope up here and simul-climb to the base of the West Ridge of Forbidden. Beyond 80 feet of the difficulties, most of the climbing was again 4th class. I was leading and, trying to stay on the ridge crest, I led us up and over another gendarme. The downclimbing was quite tricky and I slowed down quite a bit to find the best route and to protect well for my buds. I kept thinking that it wouldn’t get any harder, but it did. But, I could see the base of the ridge where we needed to be, so I persisted. In retrospect, it would have been easier to just retreat and find an easier way down (both Robert and Aidan eagerly pointed out there was one!). Oh well, we all got down safely after a couple of alpine 5.8 downclimb moves.
Some easy scrambling got us to the base of the West Ridge where folks had left packs, boots, and the like. Aidan opted to take the next lead on the understanding that I’d get to take the second! He zipped up the mountain making very fast progress. After a little more than 15 minutes, we were nearly halfway up where he stopped and we swung the lead. We were just below the 5.6 move and there was another party just above it. “You’re a southern gentleman, Theron. They’ll let you pass.”, quipped Aidan. Yeah, ok. So, I headed off. Now, apparently there were a couple of pins that I was supposed to see, but instead, the step was so fun and I thought it would look neat on film that my only thought was, “Hey Robert, get some footage of this!”. I climbed up a steep traversing crack to the left, placed a solid cam, and pulled around the corner where I saw a big rappel anchor. The other party had gone on the move again, apparently it was a guided party. The guide would go about 50-100 feet and then belay the clients in. I tried to find a place to pass, but I couldn’t really. When I caught up to them again, there was another party descending and we were simply forced to hang out on the ridge for a while. Finally, we were on the move again, but I still couldn’t pass. Then, the party opted to go up to what looked like the true summit. Robert then hollered, “Hey, go left!” So, I traversed around the steep false summit to the spot where all the pictures are taken, just below the true summit. A couple of easy moves saw us at the true summit.
Our descent decision was down the east ledges. That way we’d get a full tour of Forbidden and could also avoid the crowds on the West Ridge. I’ve heard all sorts of rumors about the east ledges descent route, that’s it’s really scary and exposed and so on. Then again, I’ve also heard that it’s not that bad. So, after doing it, my opinion is it’s no big deal at all. I had the benefit of being with two people who had already descended this way. But still, it’s pretty straightforward. We had to make five, maybe six, rappels straight down. We had a 50m rope and the first rappel sent us straight to the next rappel station. However, all of them after that required a little downclimbing. Robert hypothesized that they must have been recently reset because the beta we had talked about a 50m rope being enough. No matter, the downclimbing was always only 4th class. At the base of the last rappel, we headed straight across crossing various ribs. About 100 feet below the solitary gendarme, we headed up alongside a prominent gully. There was no reason to get in the gully; it was much cleaner climbing above it. At the top, we were finally back on walkable terrain where we put up our gear, harnesses, and rope.
The descent back to the upper camps was time consuming but easy. We did have to retrace our steps once when we boot skiied too far down and got cliffed out. Downclimbing another steep ridge saw us to more snow where we were able to boot ski down to the basin. After lots of traversing and descending on slabs, we arrived back at the stream under the waterfall where we had breaked the day before. We rested here for a long time, our friends the horseflies were back in force. Aidan and I dunked our feet and heads in the water -- what a relief! Everyone then put on mp3 players and hiked down. The hike down at first was pleasant and I gawked at the views of Johannesburg directly in front of us. Man, I can’t believe I was on that thing last year! Boston Basin is truly one of the most beautiful spots in the Cascades. It was a treat to see it in full sunlight. However, down lower, I’d be cursing that sunlight! The black flies came back again and started harassing us. On top of that, it was so abysmally hot! I wondered if I’d ever been this hot before. It was nearly impossible to stop though as the flies would swarm and nearly eat us alive. Thankfully, this approach is an “easy” Cascades approach and we were back at the car after not much time. But, changing clothes and sorting gear was hell with those damn black flies not giving us a moment of peace. What a great trip this was…I couldn’t think of that at the time though. It didn’t come soon enough that we were in the car with the windows open trying to get every last fly out!
Since I’ve wanted to climb Forbidden Peak for so long, it was only fitting to do it the best way: the Torment-Forbidden Traverse. This was a classic alpine climb and gave Robert, Aidan, and I all we wanted – a beautiful alpine setting, a challenging and committing ridge, and fun moderate climbing. We left Seattle around 6:45 or so and hit the trail a little after 10. It was pretty cool when we started, but it wouldn’t last. These late July afternoons are HOT, as Michael and I discovered one year ago on Johannesburg. We blasted up the trail though. The avalanche crossing is getting substantially easier by the year and it hardly cost us any extra time. Deep in the forest, the black flies starting hitting us pretty hard. Aidan and I both got stung by some sort of wasp. “It was probably a stick,” suggested Robert. A stick? Well, after Michael’s lesson in the Pickets, we broke out the Benedryl to deal with the swelling.
At an hour and forty five minutes we were at the upper camps in Boston Basin. The black flies had left us but the horseflies picked up where they left off. We took a comfortable break on a slab next to a waterfall where we drank our fill and killed maybe 50 horseflies. We then traversed around a prominent rib coming off the ridge at it’s bass where we arrived at another section of slabs and waterfalls. Third class climbing got us easily to the base of the western part of the Taboo Glacier. At first, the crossing looked easy and we jumped on the glacier without crampons. However, higher up, it looked like access to the peak was blocked by a massive bergeshrund. At the far end though, we were able to jump on 4th class slabs that gave us access to the glacier above the shrund. From there we went back in the opposite side to the prominent notch where we’d start the climb.
Probably the hardest rock pitch was the very first one, the first 20 15 feet of getting out of the notch. It was probably much easier in normal snow years when the notch had snow in it…maybe not. Anyway, Robert led out over the steep crack up to the normal place where we roped up. The first pitch climbed an easy dihedral up to the south ridge. For the most part, we were just to the left of the ridge and the climbing never got harder than 5.0. Most of it was 4th class and we did the whole thing in one pitch. Robert went a little far up to the east ridge and got into some loose rock and had to downclimb. From here though, it was easy to just drop our packs and scamper up to the summit where we shook hands, took a short rest, and surveyed the rest of the route.
The next goal was to get to the next notch at the beginning of the ridge. We had to make some careful downclimbs down the south face and traverse along ledges to the notch. I arrived at the notch and surveyed the next section; it looked tough. Well, to follow the ridge directly would be some unreasonably hard climbing. There was snow about 60 feet below, but separated by a large moat from the cliff. Aidan looked a little green after checking out our options. Robert decided to rappel down to the snow and had to make some awkward moves to push himself onto the snow. Aidan and followed and we helped each other across the moat. At this point, the only option was to follow the snow along the moat down some semi-hero slopes to where we could regain the rock. From there, it looked like more easy, if not loose, 5th class climbing. Robert opted to lead out again and slowly made his way down the snow. Aidan and I followed, Aidan being tied in about 15 feet in front of me. For the most part, the downclimbing was easy, just awkward and loose in spots, but it did eat up lots of time. Robert did a great job of picking the best route to get on the rock. Finally, we were off again on the rock. This time we were traversing left around another huge gendarme. When Robert crossed the crest, he yelled, “Bivies!”. Alright! We now could rest; it was about 8:30pm.
The bivy location was awesome – nice and cozy on a moderate cliff with great views of the remainder of the traverse. They were just big enough to hold three people. There’s room for a fourth about 30 feet below on some sloping slabs. The steep snow traverse was just beyond the bivies. From there, we could see that we’d be back on the crest of the ridge. Enough of worrying about tomorrow though, we sat back and enjoyed the views, the food, and the company and turned in shortly after sunset.
