Home > Trip Reports > May 8-9, 2017, Forbidden Tour

May 8-9, 2017, Forbidden Tour

5/8/17
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Posted by tabski on 5/11/17 2:59am
Kam Seth Joe and I... CRR gated at Eldo TH. Story of the trip is the observed destruction wrought by high-elevation rains at the end of last week. Massive wet-loose, glide, wet slab, cornice failure... Substantial and destructive debris underneath anything steep enough to slide. The Forbidden Tour route is quite the peach, as you take a resasonably well-protected route through incredibly intimidating terrain. I've skied in the Boston Basin and Eldo area a bunch, and it can feel so welcoming on nicely consolidated snow -- but with the huge debris piles everywhere, the atmosphere was substantially more threatening.

"Partly cloudy" was the forecast for Monday, sure enough we were in a nice snowstorm at the rappel station on Sharkfin Col, and crossed the Boston Glacier in flurries and flat light. We hung out at the notch on the Boston Glacier - Forbidden Glacier divide for about 90 minutes in the fog, before the thick grey ceiling remarkably popped and let us ski the glacier to Moraine Lake on delightful rain-consolidated pseudo-corn in the sunshine. We took the central gully exit under the icefall which required crossing/descending substantial debris. We were able to pass quickly thanks to soft snow and good visibility. With frozen snow, too-hot temps, or bad visibility this would be a bad route choice. The route around the cliffs through the trees still looks passable on skis.

After a nice windless night we continued across Moraine Lake. Appears well-frozen though cracking/softening at the edges. More impressive debris piles here, mostly along the west edge of the lake. The snow was hard-frozen, and the climb on crampons out of the lake trending NE towards Klawatti was fairly intimidating, requiring passing between a massive lobe of hanging snow gliding off a rock slab to climber's right, and the currently very crumbly icefall of the Inspiration Glacier to the left, which has a substantial amount of liquid water flowing out from beneath. On up to the top of Eldorado via the E ridge/face. Noted skier and climber tracks from the previous day. I was able to skin to the summit (I did it for you, Amar). Good skiing down the E face, getting sticky but still fun and supportable on the Eldo Glacier, and then a nightmarish schmoofest once we crossed the divide. Fairly easy linking snow patches to the climber's trail at the bottom of the first boulder field, but that section is melting quickly. Dry and clear climbers' trail to the car.

It's the year of debris for sure, widespread apparently. Settling back into planular in the lower elevations...
Like the moody photo. Thanks for the report.

succinct yet plenty descriptive -- thanks tabski.  wondering how things were shaping up, or down.

nice! We were the first up Eldo on Sunday and it looked like no one had been to the summit in some time.  Didn't have big enough balls to skin along the knife edge but I did have fun kicking steps...at least the snow was soft up high.

I'm curious if anyone is aware of any ski descents on the south face of Eldo?  There was a gnarly bergshrund at the base but it looked like it *could* go if someone was ballsy enough...


Haven't been able to find any info about it.

Only heard about one descent through the big gully:
http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports/index.php?topic=33860.0

Yes a lot of good information packed into a succinct report! Much appreciated.

author=kamtron link=topic=38469.msg155765#msg155765 date=1494609772]
Only heard about one descent through the big gully:
http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports/index.php?topic=33860.0


And from the same author of this TR.  Nice job tabski!

Thanks for the link kamtron

Anyone been over Sharkfin recently?  Wondering what it's going to be like this weekend.

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may-8-9-2017-forbidden-tour
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2017-05-11 09:59:33