Mount Stuart Rescue????

[mr.radon]

Heard on the radio while stuck in traffic two got off Stuart. One got hit by a rock slide and both were slightly hypothermic. If they were in there since Saturday what an epic. We climbed Dragontail this Saturday and watched as Stuart got hammered around 2PM. Motivated us to get the heck outa dodge......

More details on this incident???

[klenke]

Ch. 7 news said they have been rescued. Two climbers from Seattle. One may have a broken nose.

[gearho]

Party of 4 started climb on Friday and started the rock of the North Ridge on Saturday. One party made it to the summit before the storm, one party was hammered on route. Some point hammered party got a rock to face (broken nose may be an exageration, we'll see in the morning) but the glasses were broken. With minimal gear and winter conditions now on the route it took a long time to make it from just below the Gendarme to the summit.

 

Rescue called in, contact made, but weather prevented extraction and forced another cold night.

 

Party was under their own power but assisted in descent off mountain and over Long's Pass. I am sure they were grateful for the "camp" at Long's Pass where they could rest and get some hot drinks.

 

One of the climbers is now home while the other is getting a quick check up on the rock to noggin injury. I am sure they will fill more of the gaps later.

 

How do I know all this? I was supposed to be on this climb!

 

Epic-ho

[DPS]

VW4EVER and myself climbed N Ridge of Stuart in a day on Saturday. We passed the party of four. The party of four was climbing as two separate ropes with one rope considerably faster than the other. The faster rope topped out shortly after us. The other two (one fellow is the father of a hotshot local climber) ended up biving below the gendarme. (I know this because the party of four had radios and were in contact with each other.)

 

We met another party who had ascended the West Ridge. The six of us joined together to make the descent. After some false starts and a partial descent of Ulrichs (it was a white out with cold rain and wind) we managed to find the Cascadian and descend. I was a little worried about the folks still up on the ridge, it was a horrible night to be out.

[Chad_A]

Oh, man, that really sucks. Dan, I remember the rockfall up there sounding AWFUL. Shite.

[Cpt.Caveman]

Maybe the greate gendarme fell over

[lost_arrow]

we were next to you on dragontail - did you guys summit? or rap off? we were a bit concerned when we didnt see you and the weather came in...good to hear you are back...

[mr.radon]

We were on Dragontail's Backbone. I was watching the weather move in on Stuart and thought back to the EPIC we had when we got weathered in. Let's say I was very motivated to get off the Fin before that stuff smacked into us.

SEE THE ATTACHMENT, STUART IN THE CLOUDS TAKEN FROM DRAGONTAIL'S FIN

We topped out just as it started to rain hard and get foggy. We saw two parties on the Serpentine Ridge. One got ahead of us when we goofed on the Fin, but the other party was way below us, I didn't see them at all.

When I was hearing the radio I thought that they would correct themselves and say Dragontail. We met the party that was ahead of us in the parking lot the next morning. But we never did see the second party hike out. I hope they were alright. Anyone?

We bivy'd in the parking lot Saturday night since we were too tired to drive home when we got back to the trailhead, 20 hours car to car. It just rained and rained. I really feel for those souls that were stuck on Stuart.

Edited August 25, 2004 by mr.radon

[Bug]

Aye... I feel for them as well. But having survived a few epics myself, it's knowin what COULD hit ya what put's the salt on the potatoes.

 

I'm glad they are back and I hope their wives aren't too hard on them.

[Nick]

North Ridge of Stuart Epic

 

Climbing on Saturday was wonderful, with perfect weather and only one other rope of two sharing the route with us. This rope of two caught up with us and we waited around 20 minutes for them to pass us at one point. I was climbing with rock shoes, but my partner had boots, and this slowed us down a little. We probably could have climbed faster than we did, but did not feel a lot of pressure to hurry since we had planned to bivy on the route anyway.

 

At about 5 pm we were overtaken by rain. The weather came up quickly from the South, it’s approach was somewhat obscured because we were on the North side of the mountain. When the rain hit we were on the knife edge traverse, two pitches short of the base of the Gendarme. We quickly got across the traverse and onto a small bivy ledge on the sheltered (east) side of the knife edge. We contacted friends who had moved ahead of us by radio and learned that they were able to get to the summit as the rain started. They asked us if they should wait for us at the summit, but we encouraged them to descend to safety. We anchored in, got into our bivy bags and had dinner here. We each had about 2 liters of water left, our clothes were dry, and we were sheltered from a surprisingly strong downpour. We called home and told our spouses that we were caught by bad weather and that, if they did not hear from us again in a day and a half, they should call the sheriff to initiate a rescue.

 

During the night we had snow flurries as well as heavy rain. My partners bivy sack failed to keep water out, this was compounded because a puddle formed on his part of the ledge. When we got out of our bivy bags in the morning his down sleeping bag was absolutely soaked, as was he. My very light synthetic sleeping bag combined with a very light gore-tex bivy bag remained dry, and my clothing was dry in the morning. The failure of my partners bivy gear was a cause for concern, because with the earlier-than-anticipated onset of wet weather we knew that upward progress might be slowed and that another bivy was likely on route. We discussed our options, considering what down climbing/rapping the route would involve, and decided that retreat was more dangerous than going up and over the summit.

 

We made some forays out onto the wet rock, moving slowly and carefully, but were unable to really get moving until the rain let up and the rock partially dried at around 10 am. As the rock dried we were able to scoot up the last two pitches of the ridge, rap down to the ledges below the Great Gendarme. From here we climbed up, encountering some more wet rock which required extra care. We made our way up several pitches and were on schedule to clear the summit as we climbed the loose gully at around 9100 feet. I led straight up the gully after some initial route finding trouble. The soil in the gully was waterlogged and was probably even looser than usual. It was hard to find a way up without straying onto very loose rock. In the end I mostly churned straight up the loose dirt as much as possible. At the head of the gully I dropped a double sling over a big horn, tied into a locking biner with a short bight of the climbing rope, and belayed my partner.

 

After my partner ascended a short distance I heard him cry out and saw him fall amid some large rocks. I was pulled off my feet by the force of the fall, but was tied in tight so only moved a short distance. Later my partner told me that, without a belay, he would certainly have gone over the edge along with the rocks. After a bit my partner called up that he needed first aid and was unable to give me a belay. I descended very carefully, coiling the rope as I went, so as not to drop more rock on my partner. I warned him that I was coming and waited until he had moved out of the fall line. When I got down to my partner he was holding a large wad of tissue to his face. There was a lot of blood on the rocks. He had managed to anchor himself and I clipped into the sling he had put in. He told me that he had been pulling himself upward, lie-backing a very large block, when the whole thing came loose and fell past him, starting a rock slide and dropping a large rock onto his face. I got a look at the injury, which was already clotting; bleeding was now almost stopped. It looked to me like the flesh down one side of his nose was severed. I covered the wound with two bandaids but did not attempt to wash the wound because we had very little water to drink and because the large amount of bleeding had probably done a pretty good job of cleaning the wound. My partners’ clear (day time) glasses had been destroyed and there were marks where his helmet had impacted his forehead. One eye was black. His pupils were the same size and he seemed coherent, though he also seemed to be stunned. At first he wanted to continue climbing, but I thought this a poor idea as mild shock symptoms were setting in (shivering and reduced ability to concentrate on the matter at hand). As soon as I said that we should not rock climb any more today my partner agreed wholeheartedly. I was somewhat shaken as well and felt the need to watch out for carelessness on both our parts.

 

All this took quite a while and we then spent more time trying to locate a somewhat protected bivy site low down in the gully (where we felt threatened by rock fall). I wasted some time leveling the floor of a small cave formed by boulders, which turned out to be too narrow for my partner to fit in comfortably. We would have been more comfortable if we had descended to the very bottom of the gully, where I could now see a man made bivy spot, level, with rock walls around it, but my partner felt that it would be more exposed to rockfall, and he was hesitant to negotiate the narrow and very exposed ridge to reach this site; it was now getting dark and without glasses my partner has very poor night vision. As a result we spent a very uncomfortable night on a steep dirt slope beneath a sheltering outcropping of rock on one side of the gully. My partner was able to sleep soundly while hanging in his harness. I could not get comfortable in this position, so I dozed sitting up on a narrow dirt ledge that I carved, tied in, but not hanging by my harness. I was able to get into my sleeping bag and bivy and I gave my belay jacket to my partner, who was now without a sleeping bag. To keep warm my partner wore his boots inside his bivy bag. During the night his boots tore a hole in the bottom of the bivy bag. At some point we called out by cell phone and passed on the news of my partners injury. Inside my sack, later that night, I turned on my cell phone and checked messages, learning that a helicopter was supposed to come looking for us in the morning, and that the sheriff wanted me to call and provide more information on our location. Calls to the Sheriff’s number proved frustrating; I was low on battery power and was talking to a switchboard operator who knew nothing about the mountains or about our location. We had already given precise information about our location, my partners injury, and our dwindling resources to one of our friends who had gotten off the mountain the day before, knowing that he could pass this information on with clarity and precision.

 

In the morning our bivy sacks, and the entire upper mountain (when it was revealed by passing holes in the clouds), was covered by a two inch growth of rime ice. The fact that the route above us was covered in ice, and that a helicopter was supposed to be coming, made it easy to decide to descend the short distance to the bivy site on the ridge at the base of the gully. During the morning the cloud level dropped, leaving us in the sunshine. We melted ice to get some much needed water, dried out gear and ate. The clouds closed in again before the helicopter showed up. We listened to the chopper flying all over the mountain, from time to time it flew close by us, but we couldn’t see it through the fog. My partner was convinced that our best chance was to keep moving up and over the mountain. Even if the helicopter spotted us, they would need a substantial clearing in the clouds to lift us off. We decided to gear up and head up as soon as the ice cleared up. It took until around 2 pm for the ice to clear since the gully is north facing. We climbed up the few short pitches to the sandy ledge beside the very top of the Great Gendarme. I was belaying my partner up to this point when the helicopter appeared through a hole in the clouds and hovered near us for a while. We exchanged incomprehensible hand signals. We could not hear a thing; I could not bring my partner up to the ledge until the chopper flew away for a bit. The helicopter made a final pass after my partner gained the ledge, and then flew off. We could see that with the clouds continually closing in and with the spires close around our position the chopper would not be plucking us off the mountain tonight. We found large piles of rime ice that had dropped from the rocks and collected on the ledge and so decided to melt ice for water. Dehydration was one of our biggest worries, especially in terms of getting through the cold nights. At this point we made a difficult call. We were concerned that another icy night might make it hard to get over the summit, on the other hand we knew we would have to bivy somewhere high on the mountain; tricky navigation problems, cold weather, poor visibility and my partner’s poor night vision made an attempt to descend by headlamp seem risky. We decided to melt as much ice as we could, make a hot meal and bivy in the relatively protected spot where we now found ourselves. In hindsight I might have chosen to stuff our packs with ice and continue climbing.

 

It felt great to melt 5 or 6 liters of water, drink our fill for the first time in almost two days, and eat a hot (freeze dried) meal. We made a comfortable, level, bivy ledge where we could lie close together for warmth. We stuffed my partners legs, and the torn end of his bivy bag, into his large pack (which has a long extension sleeve). We organized gear and got the rack, etc. put away in bags. We were getting used to being miserably cold at night, and so were feeling OK until it started snowing at around 2 am. The snow stuck. When we got up we were completely covered in 2 inches of snow. Even my synthetic sleeping bag was wet inside. I suspect that the snow covering defeated the breathabillty of the gore-tex bivy bag

 

Now we were out of choices. We were beginning the day cold and wet. It seemed to be snowing harder and harder. Even though my approach shoes were kept dry inside my pack, they were wet and my feet were numb within minutes of putting them on. Our gloves were wet and our hands were soon numb as well. Before leaving we took the time to check the compass bearings for the summit ridge and for the east ridge that we would be descending. We got organized to climb as fast as we could, quickly ate half of our remaining food (12 ounces of granola), racked up and started up the last blocky pitches leading to the summit ridge. We were climbing by 7:30 am. I was glad to let my partner lead these pitches since he knew the way. The climbing would normally be easy, but the rocks were covered in snow and very slippery. We agreed to be very methodical, to place protection often and to keep pitches short. My partners hands went completely numb and had to be re-warmed inside my coat between pitches. My partner climbed boldly and quickly and we were soon on the summit ridge. At the summit we set our altimeters, and, checking the bearings, we carefully picked our way down to the East ridge. It was very windy now, with poor visibility and driving snow. We were both very cold and aware that we were undoubtedly getting hypothermic. As we dropped down from the summit we got a call from Seattle Mountain Rescue on our radios. What a relief to hear this call! An SMR member named Allistair was somewhere above 7600 feet and headed our way up the Cascadian Couloir. SMR had gotten the channel number we were using from a friend. We let the SMR people know our location and elevation and told them that we would descend the E. Ridge to the 9000 foot level (where you make the turn downhill toward the Cascadian). We were OK to find our way down the mountain on our own, but it was a great relief to know that we would have help on the way.

 

I am extremely grateful for the efforts of the mountain rescue, sheriff’s departments, and military pilots to help us out of our predicament. Along the way it was very good for my moral to know that people were trying to help us. At the same time I think it was vital to our survival that we kept moving on our own and did not wait to be rescued. It is also possible that we would have pushed harder and gotten over the summit a little sooner if we had not been distracted by the possibility of being picked up by a helicopter (though the ice on the route accounted for much of the delay at this point). I am not sure whether or not we made the right call to bivy just below the summit, but It might have been no better had we gone without the extra water and the hot meal and then bivied in what might have been a more exposed location at the summit. The other option, descending in the dark, cold and with one of us nearly blind, might have been an equally poor choice. We could easily have ended up stranded in the Ulrich Couloir, or been injured.

 

On the whole I feel that we did fairly well in overcoming a number of obstacles thrown up by bad weather and rock fall. My partner was a very solid companion. He thought clearly, never panicked, and kept us moving upwards toward safety. He kept his sense of humor and his ability to focus on the essentials through everything. We moved when we could and got into shelter as soon as we couldn’t move. We both enjoyed the actual climbing in spite of everything. The North side of Stuart is incredibly beautiful.

 

 

 

Our bivy gear was just adequate. I was using very lightweight gear, but had a comprehensive survival kit in part because the individual elements were light. The small size of my bivy sack and sleeping bag were the biggest problem; I am not large and barely fit inside my bag. Roomier bivy gear would have been better in every way. In the future I will carry a bigger bivy bag and sleeping bag, warmer (extra) gloves, and I would be much more likely to carry my boots, instead of approach shoes, on an overnight route with no bail out route. I will also never use a plastic water bag again. I have avoided using down sleeping bags since one nearly killed me on a winter epic in the White Mountains of New Hampshire 25 years ago. Now I will think twice about even tying in with someone who is using a down bag.

 

Looking back it is hard to believe it took us so long to get over the summit of this mountain. Everything seemed to slow way down after my partner was injured. I think the cold nights took more out of us than we were aware of at the time. We are both recovering from mild frostbite of the hands and feet and looking forward to our next climb. I would like to add that our wives probably went through a great deal more anxiety and suffering than we did, yet they welcomed us home with kind words, good food, etc.

[jefffski]

welll done. i think you made wise and valiant choices. there is no point being brave just for the sake of bravado and dying in the process.

[larrythellama]

I have never understoof using down in a temperate climate. You know if you are caught with a down bag on an El Cap rescue fines can be levied against you.

 

Glad you dealth your little episode.

[Bug]

Well done! Thanks for the report.

[catbirdseat]

All I can say is wow! Glad you made it out okay, and thanks for sharing your experience.

[Freeman]

Nick, I'm going to play devils advocate. If you did not have a cell phone how would that have changed your thinking and actions?

[Nick]

Freeman,

If we had not had a cell phone we might have gotten off the mountain a few hours sooner. After my partner was injured the possibility of a helicopter rescue definitely made us start to climb an hour or two later than we otherwise would have, which contributed to us spending an extra night at high altitude in bad weather. On the other hand, we were overdue at this point, they might have sent a helicopter up anyway, but we wouldn't know for sure it was looking for us and so might have found it easier to disregard it. I am not sure the cell phone made much differrence in any case. People knew where we were, knew when we were over-due and they knew what the weather was doing anyhow. The only actual new information we sent out via cell phone was when my partner was injured. I am not sure the rescue effort would have been launched much later than it was even without the cell phone call. When the rain first caught us we comunicated with our friends via a small radio. Also, the cell phone battery died for good early monday morning, so we had no knowledge of the ground rescue being organised for us and no way to let people know what we planned to do.

[Freeman]

Thank you, Nick

 

I'm glad you are both OK - I was one of the people who was on standby hoping to be airlifted as high on the mtn as possible on monday afternoon or tuesday. It may have seemed like nothing was happening but there were several different things going on to help you guys.

 

One of the things we really have to work on is our collection of data from the reporting parties and our triage. We have a new emergency call center in Chelan and Douglas counties, but as you found out, they don't know anything about our mountains. Couple that with the fact that our sheriff has lost some of his best people to coordinate rescue efforts (altho you had one of the best as IC on yours) has made the work of the volunteers much more difficult. In addition, the military pilots are a wonderful asset but they don't know our mountains either. For example, we have an established LZ at about 7200 feet on the south side but they didn't know its coordinates.

 

We're always trying to improve and appreciate your feedback.

 

Freeman

 

One of the first times I climbed that route in about 1980 my partner was hit in the head by rockfall at the sandy ledges and, without communications to the real world, we had to get over the top and down the south side. Fortunately his injuries were not severe and the weather was good. I can only imagine what you guys were going thru with your weather.

[Nick]

Freeman,

Thanks to you, and to all the others involved in coming to help us get off the mountain. It means a great deal to both of us.

[sendordie]

I was on standby too... it was cold in Leavenworth just getting my climbing equip. out of the garage...glad you guys made it down on your own.