Trip: Stuart's North Basin - Sherpa West Ridge (part way, anyway)
Date: 4/2/2008
Trip Report: TR: Sherpa West Ridge Mar 31-April 3, 2008
Ascending the Sherpa Glacier
“We just made a big Smiley Face”
My usual autonomic response to Ivan’s background radiation of non-sequiturs is to stare back, cow eyed, hoping he’ll assume that the filament within has long since gone dark, but instead I looked down, and sure enough, our 700 foot end run around an impasse on the Stuart/Sherpa ridge looked exactly like the Shit Eating Grin of the Mountain Gods. We had certainly eaten a lot of shit to create it.
You move sixteen tons of snow and whaddaya get? Four days with a Beowulf spouting mutant giant from a broken future. Four days stuck on snow shoes plowing through mile after mile of perfect, knee deep pow pow like some forlorn, underpowered river tug straining the haul The Colossus of Rhodes up the Amazon at full flood stage without the benefit of a barge. Four days thinking about all my hip friends spending their well earned, well turned après-ski time plying bored board bunnies with Belgian barley wine, a vaporizer decaled with Grenade stickers, and a feigned appreciation for the genius of Radiohead.
Sure, we knew there’d be fresh snow when we decided to go into Stuart basin to climb the Ice Cliff, or Stuart Glacier couloir, or, well, actually, we hadn’t really discussed it much. We thought that the Stuart Range might scintillate with a delightful dusting. We didn’t know we’d have to plow the equivalent of I 90 in both directions.
Moving through thigh deep snow:
1) Lean forward and make an impression with your knee. 2) High step into the depression, shift weight to high stepped leg, extend leg 3) Wait until sinking ceases 4) Yell “Motherfucker!” 5) Repeat with opposite leg
Our first morning in Stuart Basin began with two ignored alarms. It was 10 degrees out. After hammering our feet into our frozen boots we settled into a trail breaking excursion up the Sherpa Glacier, in preparation for an expedition style assault on the West Ridge.
We were immediately greeted by a steady current of moth ball sized rolly pollies flowing down gravity’s river, courtesy of the sunlit slopes above the glacier. Keeping to the glacier’s center as much as possible, we continued punching until we reached the bergschrund beneath the Sherpa Glacier couloir (the one on climber’s right), turned around, and slogged back to camp.
Rolly Pollies (Sherpa Glacier)
The Film, soundtrack by Ivan
Human snow plow (Sherpa Glacier)
Stuart from camp
The following day we awoke early and in earnest, pre-packed for Sherpa’s West Ridge. The ascent up our previous day’s steps went quickly. Wading up the couloir not so quickly. Trying the run the ridge over to Sherpa not quickly at all, due to an impassable step. We descended 700 feet and re-ascended in the bright, windless spring sunshine through increasingly heavy glop to the Sherpa’s west notch, giving birth to our Smiley Face in the process.
Ascending the Sherpa Glacier couloir
Mmmmmm…Cliff Shot (Sherpa Glacier couloir)
“I’d rather be skiing”
After climbing a few pitches, we did the math, and began rapping back down. Our detour had cost us too much time. I blamed Ivan. He blamed me. Eventually, we agreed to blame the Baby Jebus.
Rapping Sherpa’s West Ridge
Rather than retrace our Smiley Face (which by then was streaked with more wet slides than Britney has mascara runs), or run the ridge back to the top of the Sherpa Glacier couloir via a hidden snow gulley we spied from our new vantage point, we decided to rap into Sherpa’s west ridge couloir (the one on climber’s left) and make a quick descent, hopefully before several overhanging cornices decided to tag along.
Rapping past a foppish pompadour of snow and into the West Ridge couloir
Ivan photographing me watching Ivan photographing me watching….
Descending the West Ridge couloir
The couloir was so much deeper and less consolidated than our ascent couloir that it would have been almost impossible to climb, so I suppose our day’s fate was as it should have been.
The pleasant current of rolly pollies from the day before had become a flood sometime during the afternoon; two large wet slides had obliterated our tracks down half the Sherpa Glacier's length.
Sherpa-Stuart ridge from the Sherpa Glacier
The following morning Ivan had mysteriously sprouted a second degree burn blister on the knuckle of his right hand. I had heard incessant rubbing in the night, but tried to put it out of my mind. Emergency field surgery was called for.
Emergency field surgery: Spyderco meets mysterious knuckle blister
The patient’s recovery was swift, so we trudged a couple of hundred yards to the South and spent our last morning cragging on a 15 meter ice fall the color of an AM/PM toilet seat that Ivan referred to as the Champagne Flow before heading home.
Effervescing up the Champagne Flow
Ice fangs
On our way out we ran into an AT skier and a snowboarder.
"How was the skiing?" Ivan asked.
"Oh man, I probably had the best powder runs of my life."
Oh yeah? Well fuck you and the Smiley Face you rode in on, buddy.
