The day after climbing Forbidden Peak, Ryan and I awoke to a classic Cascade soup. It wasn’t raining, however, and we hoped that we might be able to break out of the clouds once on the mountain.
I was also a little concerned with my feet when I awoke. I’d felt them itch like this before, but nonetheless, it made it especially un-fun to slide them back into wet socks and soggy boots.
We set off a little later than the previous day and began the slog out to the hidden gully used to access the ridge. A little over an hour later we were at the base and roped up.
Climb Description:
It was a good choice to rope up below the gully if for no other reason than to speed things up above. We simul’d up the easy snow and set an anchor before hopping onto the rock.
The first section of rock is 4th class, but there is a real danger of kicking rock onto your partner below. Luckily, Ryan is careful climber and I followed him up to gain the notch.
A single, scary step on a thin snowbridge allowed us to traverse a snowfield and get to the base of the climb.
None of the climbing on this route is especially difficult. I think Beckey calls it 5.4 and I wouldn’t disagree. But, we ended up pitching out more of this climb than on Forbidden because the protection can be quite sparse.
More than once, I arrived to an anchor and remarked, “Man you really ran that one out,” as I handed over the two pieces Ryan had placed.
Moreover, the fog gave the route an eerie character–I never knew quite how exposed the next move was. This feeling is only accentuated when, the last piece of gear is cleaned between you and your simul’ing partner.
We took a quick break for lunch at noon as we came around onto the southeast face. 45 minutes after lunch we summited.
I pulled out the beefiest summit register I’ve ever seen–it must weigh 5 lbs. We read a few accounts of how brilliant the view is and discussed how we thought we were only 50 feet below the top of the clouds. Oh well, the view yesterday more than made up for it.
Ascent time: 7 hours
Grade II, 5.4, pro to 2 inches
Descent Description:
The descent is when things really got interesting. After downclimbing the immediate summit ridge, we started rapping. On our 70m rope, I think we did 7 raps. While the route description on Summit Post is probably right that the top portion is third class, I really don’t like passing up solid looking rap stations to scramble down into a grey abyss.
The face gets progressively steeper and by the third rap, down climbing wasn’t a viable option anymore. Finally, at the bottom of our 6th rap we spotted the snow. My feet nearly screamed hallelujah, since camp was just some boot skiing away. By this point, each step felt like a thousand dull tacks being driven into my feet.
Ryan decided to rap first. He disappeared over the edge.
“Uhhhh. Dude, we have serious moat problems.”
“Really, well can you see the bottom?”
“Maybe, or at least an intermediate bottom.”
“How steep is the snow?”
“It’s overhung.”
Hmmmm. Not good. We had two pickets for 30 feet of 100 degree snow. That wasn’t going to happen.
“Well we have two options, climb it or climb back up this face.”
At this point the fog had turned to rain. I had of course opted to leave my puffy back at camp because we were going to break out of the clouds like yesterday, right? Visions of shiverring away the night at the bottom of this god-forsaken moat, motivated me to figure out a plan c.
“Hey Ryan, what does the glacier look like over there?”
“A hell of a lot better than what I’m hanging above, but I don’t know if I can get there.”
“I think you might be able to get over there using the crack on this face.”
A half hour of grunting and swearing ensued as Ryan made his way down the crack and fixed the rap line to the wall.
I contemplated how I was going to follow this. It was so off vertical that it didn’t lend it self to a standard rap. In the end, we fixed the bottom of the line and I did what amounted to an aid traverse using prusiks. Yes, it was just as fun as it sounds…
An half hour passed as I struggled down. Now we had to get out.
This turned out to be easier than it appeared It was only couple steep steps out of the moat, but we were then greeted by the narrowest snowbridge we’d seen on this trip. This one really gave me the willies. It was only two steps long, but it wasn’t much more than 6 inches wide. We set up a belay and gave it a go. Kudos to Ryan for guinea pigging that thing.
Finally, back on the snow, we saw the happiest sight of the day. The bergschrund was above us. Score! An hour and a half later we were back eating a delicious dinner of tasty bites.
Descent Time: 7 hours
Back in camp, my feet were in sorry shape. Swollen, red, and pins and needles all over. Amazingly, I hadn’t developed a single blister. I rinsed them off and gritted my teeth and hoped they’d feel better for the hike tomorrow.
I still don’t know if this was truly trenchfoot. I didn’t think it could develop this fast, especially when I was able to dry my feet out every night. But, reading the description it at least sounded like the direction my feet were headed in. If it was mild trenchfoot, I can’t even imagine how painful a full blown case would be.
Overall, Mount Torment is some full-on classic mountaineering. It wasn’t technically difficult at any point, but required every skill in the book on a dirty route that it characteristic of most of the classic first ascent routes in United States.
I went back out to the Cascades this summer to meet up with my buddy Ryan. Originally, we had planned to climb Rainier, but plans changed we I developed a slight case of Trenchfoot in the North Cascades. Foot problems aside, this was one of the best mountaineering trips I’d been on. During our 3 days in Boston Basin we climbed Forbidden Peak on August 9 and Mount Torment on the 10th. Happily, we decided against doing the traverse as the weather wasn’t great our second day.
Approach Description:
We parked in the Boston Basin pullout in the shadow of Mount Johannesberg. My car puked out a huge amount of climbing gear onto our tarp and we quickly decided to leave most of it behind.
Packs bulging, we asked a couple Canadians to join us in a pre-victory PBR. They must have been fake Canadians, however, as they turned us down and marched intently up the trail.
Pre-victory beers consumed, we started the hike in. Basically, the approach lulls you into a false sense of comfort. The first half mile gently switchbacks up the Cascades. The trail then bends you over and goes straight up for the next half mile, gaining close to 1000′. I clawed my way up the near vertical dirt. Ryan seemingly used his witchcraft to float over this devil dirt. The last 2 miles are a shameless copy of the trail up Mt. Si and were a welcome reprieve from the previous sillyness.
We arrived to the low camp about 3 hours later where we discovered that all the primo tent pads had been taken. We were left chasing away some marmots and clearing a bench off of the next snow-free piece of the moraine. Ryan obviously took a bit more care with his side of the tent as I developed a nice bruise on my hip from my ill chosen sleeping pad placement which wasn’t quite clear of small rocks.
Climb Description:
This was some of the most fun climbing I’ve ever done in the mountains. It started with an bleary-eyed slog out of camp at 5am.
We broke out of the clouds at 6800′ on 25 degree snow. Finally Ryan and I started to wake up. The snow gradually ramped up as we approached the couloir.
“Dude, those guys were a bunch of pussies.” I hear Ryan say as he described the snow bridge over the bergschund a couple other climbers had told us about they day before.
We climb 3 feet higher.
“Uhhhhhh… I was wrong. They weren’t lying,” Ryan said as he enjoyed some crow. We eyed the snowbridge which had now choked down to 12 inches in front of us. To our left we spied a nice rope that had been fixed on the couloir wall. 6 feet of moat separated us. We wondered…
But expediency won out. Since it was only 7 am and the snow had been bulletproof on the lower portion we decided to just go for it. That rope wasn’t going to help anyway. The bridge was pretty thick and felt very solid. But, I don’t think I would have wanted to make that decision 3 days later.
Then the giggling commenced. The climbing was that good.
“God, I want to ski this so bad,” I yelled.
“Not right now,” Ryan rightly said noting the perfect climbing conditions and not so perfect ski conditions.
The snow ramped up to 55 degrees and I had the most fun up the remaining 500′ of couloir I’ve had on snow this year.
Following the couloir there was about 50 feet of class 4 scrambling up an open book, which remained engaging as we climbed through in crampons.
Meeting the west ridge we ran into a party who had bivyed at the notch to climb the northwest ridge.
We continued up the West Ridge with the clouds a thousand feet below.
Every 15 minutes we heard the characteristic, distant freight train sound as ice calved off Mount Johannesberg and Eldorado Peak.
The protection was plentiful and the rock was solid.
We simuled most of the route and short-roped two small pitches.
A lunch time summit allowed us to enjoy some cheese and pig heart…err…summer sausage (not kidding, read the label next time).
Ascent Time: 7 hours
Descent:
We simuled back down the West Ridge, with 2 raps.
Then we made 4 raps off the south side just west of where the couloir ends.
We used a 70m rope and though you’d be able to do it on a 60m, we had to downclimb quite a bit to get to the next rap station. Honestly, this downclimbing was the sketchiest part of the whole climb. The face is sort of dirt/grass ledges on a steep slope with some loose rock, definitely class 4 just due to the exposure and some awkward moves.
I first tried to climb The Tooth in November 2007 with two other students from Whitman–Ryan Leary and Phil Collins. However, the late fall weather didn’t cooperate and we turned around at Pineapple Pass to slog through the rain back to the trail head. We then visited a delicious Teriyaki place in Cle Elum, so all wasn’t lost!
This time I returned with Ryan in beautiful, sunny, 80 degree weather to even the score.
Approach Description:
We parked in the Alpental parking lot and quickly marched up the Snow Lake trail. We reached the fork in the trail and continued straight towards Source Lake. We soon left the trail and traversed the talus slope above the lake (hint: cut off from the trail sooner than you think so you don’t gain unnecessary elevation). We hiked over to the most eastern gully and found the pretty well worn path that led up the gully and into Great Scott Basin. We took advantage of some left over snow and cruised up to the notch on the ridge just (climber’s) left of Pineapple Pass proper. From the notch we scrambled around the back side of the small pinnacle to the base of the climb.
Climb Description:
We climb the standard route on the south face as described on SummitPost. We pitched it out in 2 pitches with a short simul-climb over the 4th class ramp system in the middle of the face. The first pitch begins at a crack up a ramp that is gained by shimmying around a large chock stone to the left of the start. From this crack, Ryan led out the full 60m pitch. After finding our way through the ramps, we pitched out the last section on nice vertical granite, staying to the right to stay in the prominent crack.
Ascent Time: 4 hours
Descent:
We did 4 raps off the summit and then rapped from Pineapple pass to save time. From the base of the Pineapple Pass gully, we just retraced our steps back to the car.
I finally made it back to the mountains this weekend and found a great stretch of singletrack. Since this was a solo mission I didn’t grab my camera and get any pictures.
The Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie is a multi-use trail and I was afraid it was going to be overrun with Seattlites trying to escape the city on a sunny weekend. Fortunately, I made it up there pretty early and only ran into 3 bikers and 4 hiking groups in 15 miles of riding.
All the pertinent details can be found on the BBTC’s wiki.
Description:
I didn’t ride the entire trail system. My crank started coming loose about 7 or 8 miles in from the TH. But, I loved what I did ride. The first 3 miles are pretty techie–it’s completely ridable, but you need to be comfortable popping up over logs if you want to stay clipped in over the endless trail retainers. After the first couple bits of climbing, the trail turns into pretty flowly singletrack. And all those little step ups are super fun on the descent.
Rating:
(For the lower 8 miles)
Tech: 3/5
Grunt: 2/5
Definitely worth the hour and change drive. Just make sure you go on an odd day so that you can actually ride the trail.
So a friend and I decided to try to ski The Great One, a couloir on the north face of Sacagawea’s southern sister peak. Our start was delayed due to the road to the trail head being closed (of course the first car through once the gate opened arrived just as we finished the 3 mile ‘extension” of the hike). The hike up required kicking a few steps and I in my running shoes obliged. The problem was that without a hard toe two things happen. First (and most obviously) your toes get smashed. Second, your foot get deflected and wrenched in odd ways. By the halfway point my right knee was starting to hurt. In any case, we ended up summiting Sacagawea a bit later than planned, but precisely when a rare 10 a.m. thunderstorm starting throwing bolts. Seeing lightning strike about 5 miles south of us, we decided to retrace our steps as quickly as possible. Neither of us felt good about being on the highest peak in the range holding metal sticks with metal skis extending 2 feet above our packs. I was especially nervous because I knew my knee was not going to let me ditch my pack and make a break for it. As we came down, another group continued their hike on the assumption that the storm will be funneled to the south of us. Whenever I see a person making the exact opposite choice as me in a similar situation, it makes me question my judgment.
While it sucked to bail, lighting is one of the few factors in the outdoors you have very little control over. It is probably the only nature phenomenon I won’t mess with. In nearly every situation there is gear or skills that will keep you alive. With lighting about all you can do is try to get to a less exposed area, crouch and cross your fingers.
The story has a predictable ending though. As the other group forecast, the storm blew to the south. So we tossed on our ski boots and got in about 1000 feet of turns. It is July, so I can’t complain. Now I just have to figure out how to move to Seattle without bending my right knee…
