TeleRoss

Yeah for the N Ridge, no crampons or axe are needed as you can stay on moraine the whole way. The descent down the W Ridge is interesting and time consuming. We pretty much stayed on the crest and bypassed a bunch of small towers. Once past a group of towers on a level stretch of ridge we dropped to the north and then kind of trended down and to the west, until we moved back over the lower part of the ridge and onto the slope leading down between stuart and goat passes. Its definitely not the most direct way, and I think there is a better route, if you search around on this site I think someone may have a better description. Mike- I don't think we've met, as I've never been on CBR. I live in Seattle, I just like to drive around a lot in the middle of the night

Topo . Yeah III 5.10 seemes right.

I think we may have lucked out on our choice because it looked like there were some nasty thunderstorms up north. Tomorrow? Right... All I'm doing is and

Climb: Stuart-Direct NW Face Date of Climb: 8/9/2005 Trip Report: Sky and I headed out for another long day on Tuesday. I had wanted to do a big day on the Wine Spires, but Sky became enamored with Kearney's line on the NW Face of Mt. Stuart. Sky won out this time and off to Stuart we went. We left the Stuart Lake TH at 5am and in 1.5hrs were at Stuart shortly after sunrise. We saw a large buck in the meadows as we were hiking up past the lake towards the large talus gully. I think we missed the faint climbers path and started up towards Horseshoe Lake. We ended up traversing a forested slope and doing a little bushwhacking before popping out in the large talus pile below the gully. There was a nice stream for water and a cool view of Stuart. Talus and scree and some shrubbery leads up the wide gully to the Stuart Glacier. We easily avoided the broken areas by staying to climbers right and traversed the softening snow on the upper glacier towards the NW Face. The snow below the face was all broken and nasty with several sketchy looking moats and large hanging snow blocks, so we had to drop down a bit to the left to access the rock. Once off the glacier and on the rock we climbed back up above the moat on some interesting sloping slabs and cracks and eventually got below the first pitch crack. Sky wanted to give the first pitch a go. It's a beautiful thin hands/finger crack in a small left facing corner. Sky had a few intimate moments with the crack at the cruxy bulge about mid-pitch that resulted in some nice bloody hands and fingers, bloodied but not beaten he recomposed and cruised past the section on the next go. I got the funky grassy corner, which was actually a lot of fun, although dirty and somewhat loosish. From the top of the corner several hundred feet of simul-climbing led us up and left. We never saw the 5.8 squeeze that Kerney describes, but instead we found a sweet 5.7 corner that lead up and right to the base of the "long perfect corner" that is the highlight of the route. I got this pitch and it is pretty sweet. Thin finger laybacks and some stemming in a left facing corner. I ended up climbing a bit too high in the corner cause it was just too much fun, but the thin crack turns into a tight seam, so I had to downclimb a bit to where I could move out left into a right facing corner that leads up to below the slabby area. Sky got the last hard pitch, following smallish cracks and nice face climbing to the top of the slab and below the broken terrain leading to the summit. We simuled to the summit and were on top at 4, 11 hrs from the car. We enjoyed a feast on the summit. Smoked sardines and pita bread, an orange and some stuffed marinated olives...yummy. From the summit we downclimbed the W Ridge a bit and did a couple of raps, before eventually dropping to the north. We did a rap in a gulley before traversing west again. We weren't really all that sure where the NW Buttress descent route goes so we kind of just followed the easiest terrain and eventually found ourselves on a ridge where a scree gully dropped down towards the basin between Stuart and Goat Pass. We dropped down this gully. Sky kept descending while I tried a high traverse around a couple towers towards Goat Pass. A small ledge led around to the pass, while Sky dropped down around a buttress and then climbed the talus back up to Goat Pass. From the pass it is easy moraine and talus to below the glacier and back to the gully that drops down into the meadows near Stuart Lake. We found the climbers path at the end of the talus and hit the main trail just as it was getting dark. We trudged down the trail and made the parking lot at 10:30...phew! We munched on canned pineapple...sooo good! before hauling ass back to L-town for burgers and beer at Duck and Drakes. Gear Notes: cams to 4" with extras in the smallish end. Set of nuts, and a couple hexes. Approach Notes: Stuart Lake Trail

well whoever eyed it...nice.

Does anyone know if the road is open?

They said a boy scout troupe passed by the lake, maybe they took some Must have made those boys' day!....Boobies!!!

Climb: Acid Baby- Date of Climb: 8/7/2005 Trip Report: Acid Baby sounded like an intriguing route, sustained 5.10 climbing for 6 pitches, with lots of corner cracks and an interesting exposed ridge, all in a super scenic setting. So Jason and I left Seattle early Sunday morning for the Stuart Lake TH. We left the car shortly before 8 am and made our way up the long hike towards Ass Blaster Pass. Finding the route was no problem. It's just around a rock toe, and near a small grove of trees. The first pitch dihedral is easy to spot from below. I led the first pitch and it gets things going right from the get go, nearly 70m and very sustained. A nice crack leads up to a big ledge below the large dihedral. The dihedral crack was stout and sweet! Challenging climbing in what felt like a slightly overhanging corner...yeee haw!! Awesome. The route kinda wanders on the next pitch, but the third pitch again kicked it up with a spicy face traverse. This is followed by another killer dihedral, this one we kinda had to lay back a bit before traversing right under the roof. We found some rotten rock on the next pitch but it was pretty minor. The last pitch took a fun little corner and then up onto a wild, exposed knife edge. We kind of hand traversed this section...super fun. The descent is super easy, just walk down the meadowy boulder field towards Ass Blaster Pass. We were back at the car at 8, and welcomed with a nice parking ticket...F*ckers... We took the last, peg-the-contrivometer pitch to another level, and did a long lead all the way to El Caporal in Cle Elum for some cadillac margaritas and to meet up with my wife and her friend who had been skinny dipping up at Spectacle Lake all afternoon. Damn, a fine route. The rock is good for the most part, although there is looseness in areas and the rock on the face sections tended to want to slough off when trying to smear the feet, as the outer layer of crystals seemed to be kind of decomposed in areas, again this was only minor. The exposed sections on the ridge crest were spectacular. And the first pitch alone is worth the price of admission. Nice work eyeing this line Mike! Yeah Sweet! Gear Notes: Lots of cams, nuts and hexes up to a #4. Rice crispy treats. Approach Notes: Near Aasgard pass, just around a prominent rock toe, turn up and left and there it is.

Burrito and ....yummy

Just don't forget a shiny new windshirt or you'll be super f'd.

We pussed out, we didn't think we could handle Serpentine...

Hey wait a minute...I was up there last October without crampons or an axe and I didn't die....WTF? I feel cheated now. I thought I was supposed to be FUCKING DEAD!!! Wanker

I ended up climbing into some orangish rock somewhere below a large slabby ledge. The rock was of dubious quality and the grooves/cracks/flakes were kind of discontinuous...I found myself kind of weaving around through shitty rock trying to find a decent way.... Sky and I both thought that Paisano was a fun climb, and really doesn't take much longer than hiking up to Burgundy Col and scrambling to the start of the NF route....yeah definitely the way I would recommend doing the NF of Burgundy....but definitely not a grade IV like Kearney says.

Josh, there is a kick-ass bivy site a couple hundred feet below on the far side of the col...super obvious. No need for crampons, if the snow is hard just cruise down the scree to the E...no worries. There is also a ton of running water on the way to the NE Ridge on the slabs below the glacier, at one point there was a fairly good sized river even. That was last week I think?

Trader Joes has these stuffed olives in garlicy olive oil all in a little pouch for $.60....super yummy. The only problem is I think Sky bought them all, cause the last time I was in there there weren't any left.

BD betalight or megalight, depending on the space you need.

We so pussed out. We should have brought some kind of skateboard with huge off-road wheels for the Cascadian descent . Trundling down that piece of shit royally sucks .

Anyone want to get out tomorrow?

-Liberty Bell group from the easy approach trail -Midway on Paisano -Near the top of Burgundy Spire -From the summit, Bonanza, Glacier, Dome, and others

Anyone up for something like the Tuning Fork?

Anyone want to do a little trip somewhere?

Yeah we climbed and skied it near the end of March '04. Not sure about when it would melt out, it is pretty protected between two ribs. Its a cool route because it is thin and super straight, and ascends to a tiny notch about 100' below and E of the summit. -The NE Couloir follows the first sun/shadow line left of the summit. The Entiat Icefall is below the larger notch farther left.

Nice work I hear ya about the drive home. Coming back from Stuart I actually had to stop and sleep for about 20 minutes.

We brought crampons but never used them. There was still soft snow on the glaciers and it never really froze solid. There are also major bootpacks going pretty much everywhere. That said, you probably might want to bring either crampons or and axe. Better to have and not need than to need and not have. Have an awesome time up there, hope the weather is good for you.

Climb: Stuart-Complete North Ridge Date of Climb: 7/27/2005 Trip Report: Sky and I hatched a plan over nachos and beers at the Colleeg Inn to do the complete N Ridge of Stuart in a day car-to-car...seemed simple enough: hike trail to Ingalls Pass, around the lake, over Stuart and Goat Passes and then down scree/dirt/boulders/slabs and snow to the toe of the ridge. Climb the ridge then descend Cascadian, over Longs Pass and back to the car. So Tuesday night after fueling up on much pizza and caffeine I picked up Sky at midnight. We pulled into the parking lot just after 2 and quickly woke up some guy sleeping in his car with our blaring music....sorry. So we hit the trail at 2:45 and quickly covered ground...only too much ground, because after several miles with no pass or lake in sight we were wondering where in the hell we were. Soon we saw a sign for Lake Ann...WTF? Where is that? Neither of us knowing where that was we kept going a little ways until we decided to make a sharp right turn and contour around rocky slopes up towards a high point. An endless scree slope/rigde brought us up to a point near Ingalls Peak...and down below the lake and trail. Yay. After descending another endless scree/boulder slope we got on the trail near the lake. We passed two other parties shortly after Stuart Pass. One heading for the W Ridge and one for the Upper section of the N Ridge. We left the ridge and made our way over to Goat Pass. Easy dirt and rock and a few soft snow crossings led us down down down to the toe of the N Ridge. We located the first pitch and sat down to eat and organize our shit. We pitched out the first five pitches of the lower ridge. Nice cracks and squeeze slots and some blocky traversy climbing led us generally up and right and then back left to the crest of the ridge. Once up on the crest we simuled the entire ridge all the way to the base of the Great Gendarme. We passed the other party doing the upper ridge a ways below the Gendarme and briefly chatted about the route and the descent, they said they too were heading out that same day so we said we'll probably see you on the descent sometime. anyway, Sky led the first pitch on the gendarme, a kick-ass layback and jam crack in a corner leading to a sweet pedestal belay. (anyone bivied on that pedestal?) I led the second pitch a short rightward traverse and then up a wider jam/fist crack. From there we simuled up and right on blocky terrain to the summit...14 hours from the car. Damn, what a fine route! So much fun. And it was only 4:45 so we were sure we would make it down before dark...super stoked. We lounged around for a while eating and drinking the rest of our water, packed our shit and started down. We hit the Ingalls Creek trail soon enough, but unsure about which way to turn to catch the trail up to Longs Pass we let our instinct to just bushwhack take over and went straight up in its general direction. We eventually found the trail just before the start of the swithbacks up the scree slope up to the pass. Over the pass and down to the car, this time making all the right turns at the junctions, back at the parking lot 18 hours after leaving it. Wow what an awesome day in the mountains. Not a cloud in the sky, beautiful route, and a lot of ground covered....plus a bit of bushwhacking...what more does one need? -should have pics up soon.