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Mountain Madness
Image 7

Perfect Weather on the Torment Traverse

Over the past three years Amy has racked up an impres­sive list of expe­di­tion climbs and treks, rang­ing from snow­board­ing from the sum­mit of Elbrus, to Ever­est base camp treks with her kids. Recent­ly like many moun­taineers, Amy decid­ed to learn to rock climb in order to apply rock craft to the moun­tains. She was a quick study, and soon found her­self want­i­ng to expe­ri­ence the realm of alpine rock climbing.

Climb­ing Mt. Tor­ment — Pho­to by Amy God­frey

Giv­en Amy’s high fit­ness lev­el and new­ly acquired pro­fi­cien­cy on rock, (and she is a Seat­tle local) the Tor­ment For­bid­den Tra­verse seemed like an ambi­tious yet attain­able objec­tive. So we set off with three days to try and get it done! We start­ed off in light rain show­ers, but stayed opti­mistic due to an increas­ing high pres­sure the fore­cast promised. By the time we reached the Taboo glac­i­er below Mt. Tor­ment skies were clear­ing, and we decid­ed to push onward to a nice lit­tle bivy ledge 5 pitch­es up the south ridge of Torment. 

In the midst of the tra­verse — Pho­to by Amy Godfrey

After a sur­pris­ing­ly good night sleep on our small perch, we awoke at the civ­i­lized hour of 6am packed up and set off for Tor­ment and beyond. The day was per­fect, 65 sun­ny and not a breath of wind. We made steady progress through the rock tow­ers, and steep snow. Around 4:00pm we hit the W. ridge col of for­bid­den. We found anoth­er great bivy site, dropped our overnight gear, and took off with light loads for an evening climb of the W. Ridge of For­bid­den Peak. We enjoyed climb­ing with light packs and not feel­ing time pres­sure for the first time that day. After a leisure­ly 3.5 hour round trip on the west ridge we set­tled in for some din­ner and a beau­ti­ful sun­set after 12 and a half hours on route.

Boston Basin — Pho­to by Alan Rousseau

The next day a hand­ful of rap­pels brought us back into Boston Basin where we had great views of the mile worth of tech­ni­cal ter­rain we had climbed over the pre­vi­ous 2 days. After a cou­ple hours of shar­ing sto­ries while descend­ing the trail we arrived back at the car, and head­ed back onto the grid.

Thanks for a great trip!

Alan Rousseau