Left TH on cascade River Road at 500am, skirted the avy debris, and then arrived at the junction of the Quien Sabe trail and Forbidden trail around 8am. Reached basecamp at 845am and took a short break where the toliet is. Made out way up short snowfields and then slabs all the way to the Forbidden Glacier and cramponed up to the ascent gully. The gully sucked real bad, low level slab with sandboxes everywhere. Pucker factor for sure.
Gained the ridgeline and hiked up the scree and sand to the gendarme at the base of the route. Roped up and I took the first 2 5.7 pitches. Serious exposure had me mentally worn out, even though it was easy climbing. Dan took the next pitch of 5.7 that was ridiculously exposed. I though I had gotten over my fear of heights but this was ridiculous. I was happy that I was not leading the pitch he did, but when I followed I realized that there was the same fall factor for me since it was a ridgeline that gained little elevation. I took the next 5.5 pitch to the top of the 2nd gendarme and Dan followed.
It was 3pm and we realized that our trip was in jeopardy if we kept going and decided to bail. We did 3 raps down to the 3-4th class traverse scramble back towards the start of the route. We scrambled down, got off route a few times, back top the glacier, down the slabs, and back on the trail and arrived at the trailhead 16 hours later. Pissed me off we did not make the summit, but I was happier to be safe and have the chance to try it again some day, but go for 2 days next time.
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