marcus Posted July 19, 2005 Posted July 19, 2005 Climb: Mount Stuart-Northwest Spur Date of Climb: 7/18/2005 Trip Report: On Sunday night around midnight NOLSe and I left Ingalls Lake trailhead and spent the cooler nighttime hours hiking towards Goats Pass. Making the pass in four hours - due in no small part to NOLSe's nocturnal trailfinding skills - we curled up under a rock, swatted bugs, and did windmills to stay warm for an hour awaiting dawn. Soon we traversed the lower moraine towards our intended objective, Stuart's Razorback ridge. Once onto the Stuart glacier however, our oblique angle made it more difficult to discern features and their exact locations. We crossed the schrund of an inviting-looking spur and traveled some distance up on good granite, only to see Razorback ridge off to our left! Keeping the rope handy for quick deployment, we continued to solo up fourth- and fifth-class terrain to the feature's termination, still well below the West ridge. Bypassing more difficult-looking terrain above and to our left, we traversed a couloir onto the upper Northwest buttress, ultimately reaching the West ridge near the West Horn. From that point we followed the West ridge to the summit. Descending the Cascadian and across Longs Pass, we returned to our car in just under thirteen hours(12:58). I'm unsure of this feature's exact name or ascent history(if any), but it's location (appoximately midway between Razorback and the Nortwest Buttress) prompted "Northwest Spur". A quick scan of current CAG & recent AAJs didn't produce any pertinent info. NOLSe had the camera, so he'll put up some pix for reference. The route travelled maybe ca. 8-900 ft(with an additional 4-500 ft finishing on the Northwest Buttress) up mostly good Stuart granite with some wet slabs down low, lots of lichen, and of course some loose terrain to avoid. We stayed mostly to the ridge crest, traversing left or right occasionally as needed. Postscript: NOLSe was a caffeine-fueled driving machine that whisked me from my doorstep to the trailhead and back again...cheers for that!!! Quote
dbb Posted July 19, 2005 Posted July 19, 2005 Sounds familiar... I think my friends climbed the same route by accident a few years ago when intending to do razorback. can you post a pic of the NW face w/ the line on it? I'm sure it's probably been done before... Quote
Szyjakowski Posted July 19, 2005 Posted July 19, 2005 poor Fred, he will always be buried in work. hey peeps, quit climbing new routes or reclimbing unclaimed lines...Fred is busy trying to climb all the other classics....Sheeeeesh. Quote
marcus Posted July 28, 2005 Author Posted July 28, 2005 Here's a cruddy scan of our approximate line of travel... (see attatchment) Quote
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