East Ridge on Forbidden Peak

Exposure on the East Ridge with views of Buckner, Boston, and Sahale

Forbidden Peak and the Boston Basin area keep drawing me back.  Even after climbing the TFT, East Ridge, North Ridge, and NW Face of Forbidden, I was happy to head back and get out there with Colin—the position, rock, and views are all awesome.

We drove up from Seattle on Friday after work, enjoying a dinner at the Train Wreck in Burlington on the way, and slept in the back of the car just below the trailhead.  We left the car at about 5:30am, got to the edge of the basin at about 6:45am, geared up at the start of the route at 9:30am, and were off on the sea of jagged ridgeline shortly thereafter.  Everything on the approach was nice and straightforward.  The Unnamed Glacier was well covered and quick in approach shoes with strap-on aluminum crampons.

Making progress with the North Ridge making up the right-hand skyline

We'd read a recent trip report suggesting that the East Ledges anchor was missing, so we brought all of our gear just in case.  The route was longer than I remembered and I was surprised that it took as long as it did to reach the large gendarme.  Exposure is a constant companion on this route and it can wear on you if you're not ready for it.  We found fun, pretty well-protected climbing on good holds through the couple of steep crux sections (around 5.8).

Taking in the view of Rainier, Glacier, Johannesburg, and more

We hit the summit at about 2:45pm and took in the views for a little bit before heading down the East Ledges thanks to a shiny new rap anchor right off the summit block.  Thanks to whoever placed that purple webbing at the top and backed up some of the raps on the way down.  We did 5 single-rope raps down and then did a downward-trending traverse across the ledges, taking our time on the loose, somewhat nerve-wracking terrain and reaching the start of the route at 5:15pm.

Boston Basin alpine meadows going all "Sound of Music" at golden hour

From there, it was smooth sailing back down, including a glissade from the high point of the glacier all the way down to the waterfall just above camp and a jaunt through the alpine meadows at golden hour.  Totally worth the resulting wet, frozen bum.  The hike out was predictably painful, but not terrible.  Another great adventure up in Boston Basin.

Coleman-Deming Route on Mount Baker

Enjoying the summit views

With a stellar forecast only days after returning from Peru, it was hard to pass up the opportunity to take Erica out on her first volcano and enjoy some beautiful views.  We drove up on Saturday afternoon and left the car around 3:30pm in a very busy parking lot.  The approach was mostly snow-free until the base of Heliotrope ridge, which itself was bare in many places.  We stayed unroped up to the 7,000 ft glacier camp, with only one or two gaps to keep an eye on along the way.  It took around 3 hours to get to camp, where we set up shop among many other tents and promptly took a pre-dinner nap after having dessert first—I love doing things backwards, I guess.

Sunset at glacier camp

We had dinner to an awesome light show over the Northwestern reaches of Baker and Puget Sound, with views of a sea of mountains extending into Canada.  We decided to start early since freezing levels were above the top of the mountain and we wanted to avoid a slushy mess on the way down.  Plus we were motivated to get ice cream on the way out at Graham's.  We left the tent at about 4:15am and made fast progress in a well-established boot pack.

We took a break at the Colfax-Baker saddle at about 6am and then headed up the Roman Wall with many other parties on the route.  We broke into the sunshine on the summit plateau and were on the top by 7:30am with great views of the North Cascades and Shuksan, in particular.

Heading back down the Roman Wall

It was an uneventful descent, including a brief nap at camp before breaking it down and continuing out to the car, making it there by 1:30pm or so.  I'd never spent the night on Baker before despite having been up there many times between the North Ridge, Coleman Headwall, Coleman-Deming a few times, and Colfax a few times, so it was a nice change of pace and chance to enjoy the views.

Vallunaraju

Nearing the summit

While recovering in Huaraz and eating a lot at some of our favorite haunts (Chili Heaven, Cafe Andino), we poured through the guidebook to decide how to finish the trip with only 2-3 days left.  We looked at Copa, Urus Este, and Vallunaraju.  After reading more about the other approaches, Vallunaraju stood out as a good way to get up high again in only a couple of days.

We left Huaraz in the morning in a "cab" that our hotel had helped arrange.  The driver asked for our names, which Dale said were "Da-le" and "Jefe," so the driver responded that his name was Pablo Escobar, so we referred to him as such throughout the 2-hour extremely bumpy ride up into the mountains.  He left us at the main trail at 14,000 ft, a bit below the lake, and we headed up the steep trail toward the moraine.  We'd originally planned to climb the North Ridge per the book, but it became clear pretty quickly that we'd need to do a lot of traversing to get to that route and that the camp we were headed for would make it quite easy to go up the standard route.

It only took 3 hours or so of hiking to reach the moraine camp at about 16,000 ft, so we set up shop and promptly had a snack and took an amazing nap.  The Type I:II ratio of fun got a bump at this point.  We woke up around sunset to eat some dinner, which we were able to do after many nights of lacking appetite and being sick during our trip up Alpamayo, and then went back to bed.

On the way up after crossing a big crevasse

The route through the rest of the moraine was a choose-your-own-adventure with a matrix of cairns everywhere.  We got to the glacier after about an hour and got our gear on before the glacier steepened.  The route was a low-angle walk up with a few steeper, more interesting bits, but mostly just walking up the glacier with a good boot track to follow.  We reached the saddle between the two summits as the sun began cascading through the gap and the finish up to the taller, North summit was really fun, with a steeper section and then some weaving next to the corniced edge.

Summit views of Ocshapalca and Ranrapalca

Coming back down the glacier to the moraine

The summit view at 18,655 ft was awesome.  We could see the Huayhuash, Ranrapalca's huge seracs, and the looming peaks of Huascaran.  We hung out for a while, knowing that we were ahead of schedule for our taxi pickup and enjoying the sunshine and stillness.  The descent went without incident and we were back at camp well before noon.  So we napped.  Again.  And then descended to the road, unfortunately finding ourselves there at 2:30pm rather than the 6pm we'd told our taxi driver.  Thankfully, we found a cab on its way down and decided to hop in with him, hoping to run into our driver on his way up along the way.

We searched for Pablo Escobar the whole way down and eventually ran into him just on the outskirts of Huaraz.  We switched cars and he took us back to the hotel for showers and a celebratory dinner.  This was a great outing and, realistically, would have been better to do as the entry to the trip and acclimatization rather than at the end.