The Valkyrie on Aasgard Sentinel

August 27, 2016

Climbing Acid Baby last August with Will was awesome—the route and rock were both of very high quality. It only made sense that The Valkyrie would be similarly awesome.

Dale and I got an early start from Seattle on Saturday morning, leaving town at 6am and then leaving the car at the trailhead just shy of 9am. We arrived at the base of the route before noon and found a bunch of parties on Acid Baby while there was only one group of three on The Valkyrie and they were already well into the second pitch. Whew. Our plan to take the second shift worked out. We ate lunch and then headed up.

Hand jams of glory on pitch 2 (photo by Dale Apgar)

The first pitch crux was a little tricky but not too bad. Pitch two was much more sustained and quite fun, with a long hand crack section on very grippy rock. The rightward traverse on pitch 4 into the hidden hand crack was especially memorable. From there, more fun moves and lower-angle climbing brought us to the knobby face and then on to the shared ridge finish. We completed that by 5:45pm, having taken our time on the route to enjoy it. A weather system had threatened us around 2pm, but it ended up blowing past us to the West, so we lucked out.

The summit had great views and was an easy walk off. We descended quickly and floated on some whiskey from the lake down, arriving at the car just after 9pm for a 12-hour car-to-car time. Great route—perhaps even better than Acid Baby!

*Sunset on the Southern Pickets - Inspiration is the M-shaped one in the center*

East Ridge on Inspiration Peak

August 21, 2016

I'd been hoping to get into The Pickets for a couple of years now and jumped at the opportunity with a perfect weather window and Dale in town over a weekend when I could take an extra day off work. We planned our adventure on Thursday night, left Seattle around 8:30am on Friday, grabbed permits for the Terror Basin, and started hiking up Goodell Creek at about 12:30pm.

Much has been written about the intensity and duration of Pickets approaches, so we were mentally prepared for a slog. Thankfully, a pleasant 1.5 hours along the creek with some brush, but nothing crazy, took us to the turn uphill. While it was steep and unrelenting for nearly 4,000 feet, it really wasn't that bad either. At 5,200 feet or so, we got our first full view of the Terror Glacier basin and our objective. It was striking and motivation enough to make the long, open traverse to the saddle at 6,200 feet and descend to camp. We met one other party of two there who decided to go for Terror. Another party of two came in after we'd set up camp; they were headed for West McMillan. Behind them was a party of four who were also aiming for Inspiration's East Ridge.

We got to bed early, woke up a little after 4am, and were on the move a bit after 4:30am. The benches weren't hard to navigate in the dark and we eventually made it to the outlet of the lake below McMillan before starting to head up slabs toward Inspiration. A little after 7am, we had crampons on and were crossing snow toward a narrow ramp which we hoped would take us to the upper glacier and the base of the route. After getting most of the way up it, we decided that it was too tenuous—the snow bridge wasn't very thick, the ice was pretty steep, and the crevasses below us were big.

We headed climber's right to the rock rib separating McMillan and Inspiration instead. It was mostly 4th class with a few 5th class moves. It brought us exactly where we wanted to go—to the upper glacier just a few hundred feet from the base of the route. We quickly traversed over and found a thin tongue of snow laying up against the face with significant moats on either side across the whole face. Lucky!

The first few hundred feet of the route were engaging, but forgettable. The climbing was pretty steep for approach shoes with packs and we gingerly simul-climbed our way up until things eased near the top. At the top of the saddle, we switched to rock shoes for the crux pitches and thoroughly enjoyed the first 5.8 pitch before arriving at a lovely ledge below the crux with stellar views from the Northern Pickets all the way around to Glacier Peak. We could see our friends cruising up West McMillan Spire as well.

Dale set off on the crux pitch and thoroughly enjoyed himself. The climbing was pretty physical with packs on and the crack was awesome, ranging from wide hands to perfect hands. I seconded and took a look around at every rest. The climbing would have been an amazing pitch on its own at Index, but to be on that face with that position in the wild Picket Range was something else. We finished the pitch with high fives and many a superlative uttered.

From there, it was easy ridge scrambling to the summit. We switched back to approach shoes and were glad we did. It was 12:30pm when we hit the summit, so we decided there was time for a short nap after lunch, and then it was time to begin the tedious descent. 3 double rope raps off the summit down the West Ridge got us to a station above the South Face. The rap from there was nearly a full rope length free hanging before touching down a little bit above the next rap. Invigorating!

The rest of the raps went without incident, as did our long end run across the glacier to make it through the maze of crevasses (photos from the summit were helpful). We retraced our steps from the morning at that point and were back at camp around 7pm to make dinner before dark.

After a leisurely start on our last day, we thoroughly enjoyed our descending traverse out, including foraging a bunch of wild blueberries. The hike down the steep ridge really wasn't that bad and put us back at the car at about 2:30pm. Our friends who had climbed McMillan told us about a great swimming hole from the group campsite, which we enjoyed thoroughly before heading back to town. Great weekend and an awesome realization that a place so wild and exciting was so close by. There's so much more to do!

NW Face on Forbidden Peak

July 24, 2016

The statement in Blake Herrington’s new Cascades Rock book seemed improbable. “The Northwest Face is Forbidden's best route.” When comparing to my experiences on the 50-classic West Ridge via the TFT, gendarme-laden East Ridge, and long alpine adventure that is the North Ridge, I was a bit skeptical, but had to see for myself.

Eben and I decided on our objective on Saturday evening and packed quickly, leaving town at about 8pm in his van. We did some guessing about durations and decided that leaving the car at about 5am seemed right, with the potential for some descent in the dark.

We woke up at 4:15am and were moving by 4:45. It was 6am when we crossed the main stream at the edge of Boston Basin. We went up the moraine and then dropped down onto snow pretty low on the Quien Sabe Glacier. We began our rappel from Sharkfin Col at 7:45am, which took us onto snow on the other side, but left us above a big, gaping bergschrund with no option to end-run. We found evidence of a snow bollard from another party and decided to give it a shot to rap past the berg opening. It worked great, but was a bit disconcerting since we ended up freely hanging for a ways until reaching the other side. Thankfully, the snow was firm.

After getting down onto the Boston Glacier, we had a snack and then began traversing. We wove our way around crevasses and made it to the North Ridge notch just shy of 10am. The snow had melted out enough that it was an easy scramble to the bivy site there at the start of the North Ridge. We went down some ledges and found a single rap leading to the Forbidden Glacier. At 11am, we down-climbed the edge of the moat and stepped onto rock on the ramp just up and climber’s right of the toe of the ridge.

We soloed the first section, which was mostly moderately loose scrambling leading to the knife-edge ridge. Just before the top, I put a bit of pressure on a very large block that must have been perfectly balanced. It came crashing down next to me and went careening toward the glacier. Just because a block is huge doesn't mean it's not going to rip.

At the knife edge, we stopped to put our rock shoes and rope on, as well as finish our lunch. It was right about noon at this point. We simul-climbed the ridge and got to the base of what looked to be the crux. I started up it, but everything looked a bit dirty and not terribly well-protected, so I went left and found a bunch of good rock leading up to the ridge, where I continued across and stopped where the ridge smoothed into the face and I ran out of gear. I later looked up more beta and realized that this section was, in fact, the crux. Whoops. Eben tried going up and right from here, but quickly found poorly-protected slab, so he came back to the belay and then went up through a wide chimney, past some old fixed gear, and then slightly left until popping out on the upper face. This passage felt improbable and really fun.

The entire rest of the route consisted of solid rock and fun movement. We simul-climbed the entire face, stopping once near the top to re-rack. We made it to the summit at 2:45pm, which was a little longer than we’d expected on route, but we had slowed a bit through the couple of route-finding bits. We searched the summit area for the East Ledges rap anchor and couldn’t find it (perhaps it was removed?), so we went down the West Ridge instead. Some raps and down-climbing got us to the notch and then we made two raps in the snow gully before down-climbing the rest of the snow (which is melting out fast). After the predictable slog down, we made it to the car (and, more importantly, the beers in Eben’s fridge, at 7:45pm).

So is it the best route on Forbidden? I’d rather say that it should be equally as high on Cascade climber to-do lists as the West, East, and North Ridges. It has the wild feel of the North Ridge with the solid rock (up high) of the West Ridge. In terms of beta, we found approach shoes with aluminum crampons, ultralight axes, a single 60m x 8mm rope, and a double rack to #2 was perfect.