Trip Report
Intermediate Alpine Climb - Forbidden Peak/West Ridge
Great teamwork and collaboration led to an efficient 15 hr c2c ascent of this classic route up Forbidden Peak.
Isley Gao
- Wed, Jul 16, 2025
- Intermediate Alpine Climb - Forbidden Peak/West Ridge
- Forbidden Peak/West Ridge
- Climbing
- Successful
-
- Road suitable for all vehicles
-
Road is open all the way to Cascade Pass trailhead. Minimal potholes, road suitable for all vehicles.
Multiple stream crossings. In the morning, feet were able to stay dry. On the descent, streams were running faster and 2 crossings involved dunking our feet in ankle-deep.
After reaching high camp, follow the obvious trail toward the granite slabs. You can go left or right, and we chose right, up the weakness in the slabs with running water. Far left is also walkable low angle slabs, but there seemed to be more snow patches on that side this time of year.
We crossed one snow field (no crevasses) to the base of cat scratch gulley. The 'snow gulley' is nearly entirely melted out with a skinny snow finger left. Cat scratch gulley is a band of dark rock just to the left of the snow gulley. There is maybe 1 move that is 5th class and worth protecting in the first 20 feet off the ground, and then quickly peters out to lower angle scramble with grass and dirt.
There is a bit of snow at the notch, but all of the climbing is on dry, solid rock on the ridge.
Gear per rope team
- 60m rope
- .2-2 single rack
- 6-8 alpine draws using double length runners
- 2 cordelettes
- Ice axe
- Approach shoes (did not need climbing shoes)
- Optional crampons or microspikes (I used neither)
GPX track with waypoints: Gaia
Jule, Paul, Karl, and I drove out to the trailhead Tuesday evening and slept in our cars at the trailhead.
At 2:30am we woke up, geared up, and hit the trail at 3am. The trail as expected is brushy and steep until it opens up as you reach low camp. We got to low camp and were met with clear views of Johannesburg Mountain on one side and our route to Forbidden Peak on the other.
It took us about 2.5 hours to reach high camp, where we filtered water and had a short breakfast break. We saw 2 goats here that confidently plodded over to us, probably hoping to be blessed with the gift of salt.
We approached toward the base of the climb on the right side of the slabs, although based on other tracks, both left and right go. There were a stretch of snow to cross to get to the base of the gully. We used our ice axes just in case, but most of us just hiked up in approach shoes.
At this point in the season, the snow in the main gully has melted out and retracted from the rock walls. Cat scratch gully on climbers left is the more secure and doesn't require an awkward transition from snow to rock.
We stashed our poles and ice axes here and pitched out 1 pitch, then simuled the rest to the notch. There is a 5th class move about 20 feet up that is probably worth protecting, but the rest quickly turns into a 3rd class scramble. There is quite a bit of loose rock once the angle lessens, but our party was conscious of this and did not have any issues with sending rocks down or seeing any loose stuff come down on its own.
We arrived at the notch at around 9:15am and started climbing the ridge. Most of the route is either on the ridge or slightly to the left/north. The airy step proved to be no problem and we placed pro sparingly. There are lots of places to place pro, but the climbing is more scrambly and ledgy that you can really run it out.
We ended up simuling almost the entire ridge, building anchors when we ran out of gear (3? times). There were 2 sections with pitons. The first one had 1 piton at face height, and the second one (probably the 5.6?) had 1 piton and 1 chopped piton. We ended up simuling these too, as the climbing was juggy and secure.
On the descent, we downclimbed from the summit and did 2 rappels off tat slung around boulders, and then downclimbed the rest back to the notch.
From the notch, a short hike down to another tat station, and then a series of 6 rappels with a 60m rope that took us back to
the base of the cat scratch gully where we stashed our gear.
We packed up our stuff and started our descent down the snowfield, heading back the way we came trending skier's left down the granite slabs to reach the watery gully that we had come up earlier in the morning. The water was rushing much faster than in the morning, but we were generally able to stick to dry boulders and ledges, eventually reaching dirt trail.
All of the water crossings had faster, stronger water than in the morning, and we had to get our feet wet for two of the crossings. The rest of the hike back to the cars was quite pleasant in the shade with brief periods of being hot and sweaty when the trees parted and we were in full sun.
We were all really glad to make it back to the cars at about 6pm with plenty of time to drive home and relax before another work day tomorrow.