doug faust

Trip: Mt. Stuart - South Face - Not a Couloir Date: 9/12/2007 Trip Report: I was unable to muster a climbing partner on very short notice, but still, for whatever reason, dead set on Stuart. Sooooo scrambling - the mountaineering equivalent of riding a moped. Even worse in this case, since the Cascadian Couloir is a thing of ill-repute. So we had this gruff old medic in my Explorer SAR post way back when and he once told us that if your jaw is broken in the wilderness you can get the same nutrients from food by putting it "in the out door" so to speak. We laughed. He huffed and said something like "it'll get the job done." This came to mind while thinking about the Cascadian and watching a nice sunset from Long's pass. I wondered though if a direct line between Ulrich's and Cascadian would go, it looked much nicer and direct once you got out of the thick vegetation. So I tried it. The brush at the end of the obvious meadow which the Ingall's Ck trail runs through was not terrible. Some people, I think, take this meadow as a "shortcut" to get to Cascadian and someone had even put bits of flagging tape on a deer trail before getting upset by the deer's lack of summit aspirations. Starting at about 5500' I found myself mostly on solid, walkable talus and non-exposed, clean 3rd class to about 7000' whereupon I was spit out on the boulder field right below the false summit (climber's left of Cascadian). I then finished in a standard fashion. No cairns, no footprints, no people, a little routefinding, a lot of fun. On the way down, I took Cascadian, just to see what the big deal was and yeah, it was dirty, mobile and indirect, more fun down than up. Unfortunately, my camera batteries and self-portrait skill are equally bad, so this is all I got from the top. Yeah. So *ahem* congrats to my parents for being married... geez... for longer than I've even been alive. (Not to say that i'm not a bas7ard.) a couple other pix Gear Notes: Sharpie and old utility bill for the sign.

Hey, I'm going to be in Calgary for a week in the beginning of June and then sneak out to Jasper or Banff afterwards. Anyone know where to hook up with some local climbers, or want to ridicule my first thoughts about a climb; Castle Mountain or Mt. Columbia?