Stuart N Ridge?

[Crackalicious]

Thinking about heading up to get on N ridge of stuart soon, anyone seen how much snow/ice is haning around on the route?

[John Frieh]

Still present.

[DonnV]

The earliest I've done the NR was the first week of June a couple years ago. I was on the summit a couple weeks ago and, judging from the amount of snow up there, you'll find NR conditions at least as snowy as we did back then. The one piece of advice I'd have for anyone going up this early is to only go if you can do the direct gendarme finish, or unless you're a pretty good ice/mixed climber. We had lots of snow on the route, which really created no problems for the most part. We were in boots all the way to the gendarme, where we switched to rock shoes for the next 4-5 pitches (all gendarme stuff was totally dry). But I remember looking at the original finish (rap into the gully and up the other side) and thinking that it would be really difficult. Really plastered with ice. As it happened, Colin H. was soloing up ahead of us that day and did do some variation across and up that gully, but it looked hard to me.

 

In a nutshell, don't plan on the "easy" finish being easy. The rest of the route made a great outing with all the snow on it, and the gendarme finish was completely free of snow until above all the harder stuff.