[TR] Mt. Stuart- Stuart Glacier Couloir - Gang Bang Recap 5/7/2005

[DonnV]

Climb: Mt. Stuart-Stuart Glacier Couloir - Gang Bang Recap

 

Date of Climb: 5/7/2005

 

Trip Report:

I wish I could recreate Ivan's excellent TR from yesterday, but that's beyond my talents. But I've gotten a couple of emails this morning from buddies who are wondering where the photos are that I told them I had posted of our climb. So, since the data crash seemed to leave yesterday's photos alone, I'm reposting them along with my best shot at summarizing Friday and Saturday on the north side of Stuart. Sorry if I miss anything or remember it wrong. I suffer from data loss myself sometimes.

 

After reading the TR last week by DPS of his climb with Juan, Heinrich and Wazzumountaineer, and getting more info from DPS and Juan, four of us (OlegV, vw4ever, jhulbert and me) drove up from PDX and hiked in Friday to camp in the boulder basin below the Sherpa Glacier. We camped near Goatboy and his wife, who had a smooth cruise up the Ice Cliff Glacier the next day. Beautiful place to camp except that every trip to get water meant punching through your previous steps at least twice. A miracle no one busted an ankle in the minefield.

 

Our team of 4 left camp about 3:30 AM and headed up to the base of the route. Excellent conditions all the way up to the WR notch. One lead up from the notch and I almost stepped on the ATC dropped by Wazzumountaineer a week before (it's in the mail, Kurt). Further up out on the north side we could look down and see Ivan, Nolse, Kyle and Travis below in the couloir. Ivan and Nolse were slumming on SGC and going car-to-car after finding Dragontail Madness and NW Face of Stuart out of shape and abandoning earlier plans to bivy and climb the next day, too. They flew up our steps even though Ivan felt like it was cheating, and were right behind us as we neared the summit, but invisible in the dense fog. Nolse will be creating a verbal cc.com identification system for situations like this which will involve calling out "Did you lose a windshirt on Girth Pillar?"

 

We had a straightforward descent down out of the fog to the Sherpa and back to camp. Ivan and Nolse picked a hard finish to the top and took a wrong turn on the descent but eventually were on their way down the Sherpa, where Ivan took a tumble. Jeff saw it from camp and we were all able to look in time to see the body come to a stop not all that far above the schrund, which has opened enough that it might have complicated things for him had he not stopped. Looked exciting from where we were.

 

We packed up and started hiking out just as Ivan and Nolse were starting to negotiate the dangerous traverse of the boulder basin (possibly the crux of the climb for all of us). We hiked out a good part of the way with Goatboy and his wife. They were off to drink lots of beer while we four just hit the road for PDX, arriving home at about 1:30 AM.

 

Nolse and Ivan hiked all the way out somewhere behind us. Ivan got blisters from boots that he hates, had THC to help take his mind off the pain, but missed his mp3 player. They split up at the parking lot and Nolse drove off somewhere and Ivan crashed right there in his car.

 

Kyle and Travis have never been heard from again.

 

Here are the photos I posted yesterday in the lost thread.

 

Oleg and Jeff at the start of the couloir.

 

 

Chad heading up the lower section.

 

 

Jeff just above the ice step.

 

 

Either Ivan or Nolse is well above the crux bulge and the other is above them hidden by rock. Kyle and Travis are hard to pick out but they're below the bulge on the climber's right side of the couloir.

 

 

Ivan and Nolse are in the center of the photo on the last stretch of the couloir. Kyle and Travis are easier to see and are together at their belay spot below the bulge.

 

 

Oleg finishing the last tricky move to the summit.

 

 

Coming off the summit, showing why we have no panoramic vista photos.

 

 

Still smiling on the traverse to the false summit.

 

 

And finally, practicing synchronized descending below the false summit.

 

[DPS]

Nice photos, it is almost like I was there.

[John Frieh]

Nolse will be creating a verbal cc.com identification system for situations like this which will involve calling out "Did you lose a windshirt on Girth Pillar?"

 

 

I just love meeting people and telling them who I am and watching their response. Shit is hilarious...

 

I still vote for a cc.com gang sign.

 

Good TR! Anybody headed into Stuart this coming weekend keep an eye/ear out!

Edited May 10, 2005 by NOLSe

[jeffh]

Cheers to everyone for a great trip. Sorry to have missed the other cc's up on the route. OlegV did state that he heard a lot of swearing in the alpine air and the name Ivan as we reached the summit.

 

Figured I should add a picture of Donn for all the great leads he provided me. It is a little out of focus but that is because it was the only time I was infront of him the whole day and I was breathing too hard to hold still.

[OlegV]

Donn, thank you for taking your time writting a great TR! Here is more pictures from our trip.

 

Donn and Chad just over bergshrug

 

Jeff soloing steep ground

 

Chad climbing rock

 

Leading into the mist...

[OlegV]

somebody tell me, what did I do wrong???

[OlegV]

 

 

[gyselinck]

I was just curious, how old are all you guys? I could make a guess juding by the pictures, but I wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Every climber I have ever run into in the mountains is about your guy's age looking.

[Alex]

Thats because we are all the same age. 30. And if we are older than 30, we are still 30.

[DPS]

Speak for yourself Alex, I'm 29.

[OlegV]

Actually, we are climbing clones.

[BigLegs]

I think everyone under 55 looks 30 with a helmet on.

[ivan]

your recap of me tr got the facts strait, but has far too little obscenity goddammit!

 

what the fuck is this data-dump shit? i spend one day in court on a nw forrest pass charge, get zero spray time, and return to find my quality shit is gone!

 

---EDIT ----

shit, oleg must be some kinda crazed stalker! he's keeping my t.r.'s in a secret file, and was kind enought to email me That Which Was Lost But Now Is Found Again. thanks to that wily, slavic import, the universe can now be more complete w/ my original words:

 

Climb: Mt Stuart-Stuart Glacier Gang-Bang

 

Date of Climb: 5/7/2005

 

Trip Report:

a plan to climb dragontail madness morphed from a plan to climb the nw face of stuart to simply climbing stuart glacier coulior. nolse and i departed the parking lot after an hour of sleep saturday morning, intent on the nw face and a bivy at the top of the creek.

 

we managed our way up mountie creek in the total dark and reached the upper basin shortly after sun-up to find at least 3 other parties already on the mountain, 2 heading around the north ridge for points unknown, and one heading up the ice cliff. we stashed our bivy gear under a big boulder, i chugged some tasty red bull, and off we went.

 

found the nw face to be awful stiff looking - hopefully jon'll post a damn picture to beat the meager words, but generally the first bitch (er, pitch) looked mean and thin, w/ a damned difficult escape onto the snow patches, which we couldn't confirm from far off it they even connected together well enough to make it all go. at any rate, i had no business trying to lead the first pitch, so we decided to go w/ the "uber-classic moderate" stuart glacier coulior instead (conviently just a hundred yards away). two parties of two hard already reached the west ridge notch above, so no worries of death raining down the tight gully, we proceeded up it, unroped, to the ice bulge. there i felt bad mojo at soling through the steepish bit (having been denied life insurance lately makes me feel like i'm in this morbid bet w/ the Man), and so we roped up. jon fired through the fun part and then it was just a quick sprint to the notch. to be honest, this climb right now feels way to easy, kinda like you don't deserve to take credit for it - there's a veritable escalator of deep steps kicked into the excellent neve and great dagger placements the whole way, so you can pretty much relax the whole time.

 

clouds were thickening and lowered, and we were in the fog once we hit the notch. the party of 2 below us (did i mention this fucker was crowded? 8 folks up it in a day) held off a good long while as we were raining death down up until the w ridge. there we hit the caffeine goo, re-roped, and dispatched the rock pitches, the second of which offered some enjoyable dry-tooling around an exposed corner. the last pitch i managed to fuck up by choosing an overly difficult route to the summit - placed a hex then got stuck for awhile, wasting strenght and time. jon finished it and i felt like a fuk'n pogue, but that got us on top in the Big White.

 

tea n' crumpets on the summit and damn i felt sleepy; we headed off for the sherpa exit and managed to go right at a cairn where we shoulda gone left. didn't figure it out till the fog parted briefly and we'd descended a few hundred feet already. i felt a little demoralized, but was consoled with a sweet piece of booty-gear, a charlet moser 3rd tool someone dropped god knows how long ago. at the time i was convinced i'd find a body to go with it, as i was feeling a bit grim in me soul.

 

wanna point out that from the summit on down the snow sucked a huge donkey dick - super soft and nearly continous ball-busting punch throughs. we made it the sherpa and waded down the slop w/o crampons. i was feeling exhausted by now (one of dez days i'm gonna descend stuart w/o feeling like some samoan's just beat the shit out of me), and was showing bad form of the way down...slipping, sliding, needing to stay face it - almost feel into the fuggin 'schrund at the base of the top steep part (bad scene too, it's getting quite roomy in there now!). jon was racing far ahead now and had already made the decision to just glissade everything...i belated decided to imitate him after one too many wimpers as a result of getting both feet inescapable stuck in punch throughs, mired like some exotic, iron-armed dooley-bug.

 

by the bottom of the sherpa we were both thoroughly soaked - the last insult, the boulder field, was like some ww2 mine-field drama - walking like ninjas, trying to sense the hollow spots below the slop, failing at almost every step. we hit the bivy stash as the other folks were leaving, having packed up camp. niether of us relished the prospect of a cold, damp bivy, and w/ the weather forecasted to crap out, it didn't seem likely we'd be able to climb the next day as we'd thought of doing (course, as jon pointed out during our initial phone conversation "dude, isn't that mother's day? don't you have to be around?" - maybe this was for the best). we decide to just suck it up, through the bivy gear back in our packs, and hike out for the whole car-ta-car insanity/glory.

 

i hate my morell boots. they've alwasy fucked w/ my feet no matter how much i try to break them in. on my guye peak climb a few months ago i thought they'd finally conformed to my feet. this was a huge mistake; by the time we'd reached the summit my heels were already sporting shot-glass sized open blisters. back at camp, putting my besogged boots back on just seemed like the wittiest insult god had yet devised for me. summoning some physical courage from my good friend doctor marley, i hobbled the whole way out. jon patiently waited till we made it out of mountie creek, which appears to have several inane detours in it now, then i cut him lose and didn't see him till the parking lot.

 

total round trip time, 21 hours for me. great pain-based, thc-inspired hallucinations for the last hour or so, damn i wish i'd had my mp3! we sorted shit out, made our good-byes, and jon was off to find food at chevron. i crawled all 6'7" of my lopsided frame into a mitsubish mirage that's probably pretty cramped for a japanese midget and slept the most blissful 9 hours of my life i can freely recall.

 

excellent route, great day, fond memories. it'll be in for a few weeks more i imagine.

 

jon, how 'bout some pics so folks can skip all this verbosity?

 

Edited May 11, 2005 by ivan

[DonnV]

I was just curious, how old are all you guys? I could make a guess juding by the pictures, but I wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

I think everyone under 55 looks 30 with a helmet on.

In this case, that's just too good a comment to pass up. I'll be 55 in another week and a half (and way too old to have my feelings hurt by a bad guess). And I don't really know how old my 3 partners were, but probably all somewhere in their thirties.

 

Nice to have your original text back, Ivan, but the fact that Oleg saved it is a bit scary. He seemed really normal on the climb, but I'll sure be watching him more closely next time.

[goatboy]

Here's a shot from camp of Donn V and his gang descending . . . . . Nice work, guys!!! Two folks above bergscrund near top, two lower down above ice ....

[goatboy]

And here's a shot of the clouds in which they were enshrouded . . . . .

 

[swaterfall]

sweeeeeet!!!

[OlegV]

OK, you got me, comrades! I am a secret service agent sent by Putin to track down any suspicious activities on Northwest. People climbing the mountains? Hmm.

[pms]

Hey John,

 

Do you have a picture showing the NW Face? Some people were wondering about its condition. You Portland guys are awesome btw. Do you have a fast vehicle?

[kurthicks]

anyone have an idea how much snow Stewey got during the last storm?

 

I've got some video of the NW face from 2 weeks ago, but no way to send it along.

[John Frieh]

Hey John,

 

Do you have a picture showing the NW Face? Some people were wondering about its condition. You Portland guys are awesome btw. Do you have a fast vehicle?

 

Jim: in my gallery. You could climb it but you would really have to force it. I think NE face or NE face of false summit looked a lot better than NW face IMO (its what I'm trying this weekend... hope to see some other ccers in there!).

 

My truck isn't fast but it is fast enough... I think I have like 15 moving violations or something in the past 10 years or so...

 

I did put 40K miles on it in 9 months time last year... hoping to beat that mark this year. Roadtrip!

[pms]

approaching Beckey mileage, impressive. Maybe you can maintain the pace for another 60 years and counting? I believe his white Jetta had over 500,000 miles on it. When he sold it the upholsty looked like new, as he had it covered with a sheet the whole time he owned it.

[Juan]

Jim:

 

Which John? I don't think I took a good shot of the NW Face on May 1 when we climbed it. I'm sure it's getting thin by now -- much more so than when you did it earlier this year.

 

Sharp

[kurthicks]

Sharp...

he means NOLSe. If i get motivated to walk that far after Ice Cliff, i'll take a pic and post it next week. no promises.

[John Frieh]

Sorry this is so late but I had to put some more miles on my car. Here is link to my pic of the NW face from 2 weekends ago:

 

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=10506&size=big&sort=1&cat=500

 

Based on what I saw this weekend (sorry no pic) I can assure you unless you are drytooling (if you are let me know... I'd like to go) it isn't in.