[TR] Mount Stuart- North Ridge 7/21/2005

[sweatinoutliquor]

Climb: Mount Stuart-North Ridge

 

Date of Climb: 7/21/2005

 

Trip Report:

Last week my buddy Jazon (sparverius) and I made the 7+ hour drive from Corvallis up to Stuart with the idea of spending a few days in the area (N. Ridge of Stewie and a couple of routes on Ingalls). Got started at a reasonable time on Thursday, and camped at Stuart Pass. Ingalls lake is sick!

We got moving around 3:30 and were confused and wandering aimlessly by 3:35. Crossing the glacier was a bit interesting, seeing how we were both sporting clip on crampons over tennis shoes. The snow on the glacier is really quite hard, and I would think that if you go with a sharpened stick you must have some kind of deathwish. At one point my crampon just fell off and it was a pain in the neck trying to get it back on, balanced on the other one (which was pinching like hell!). Anyway, we scored some water and got into the entrance gully without major incident.

Once on the ridge the climbing was spectacular! We simulclimbed pretty much everything and got off route only a couple of times (evidenced by lot's of lichen). Overall it was really obvious where to go, and before we knew it we were climbing the pitches that I had read so much about (great white slab, cool hand traverse, etc.).

We got passed by another party about halfway up that was moving much quicker than us and protecting about half as often. They were shreading the gendarme by the time we even got near the base of it. We choose to take the non-gendarme varation for a couple of reasons, most of which were bad excuses but some of which were valid. This was probably a bad descision (in retrospect) cause the escape gully was a pile of crap. It was passable, but still quite wet, and there were a couple of friction slab moves with hands on ice, wet and dirty feet on rock, etc. If you go for this route, plan to climb the gendarme. I'm about 87% sure that it's way better, and it seems like it's pretty doable. Anyway, after another couple hours of scrambling in the loose and wet we were on the summit.

We went down the cascadian shitpile and made it back to the tent by around midnight. Overall an awesome route sandwiched between some less than favorable scree. Thanks Jazon for getting this thing off the ground! I look forward to our next adventure!

 

Gear Notes:

Water! We carried at least 2 liters for the ridge alone and were still way low. I think I only took 2 pisses all day.

 

Approach Notes:

Found running water 2/3 of the way down the cascadian.

[Chriznitch]

rockin

[sweatinoutliquor]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that nothing on Ingalls went cause of an unexpected and quite nasty thunderstorm system that rolled through the area then next morning.

[gyselinck]

Thanks for the writeup.

[sparverius]

several things learned on the trip:

1) should've had the rope doubled at all times. We decided to run it out on the last several pitches and were rewarded with lot's of rope drag, confusion, and cursing.

2) could've lightened the rack by a few cams, biners, and slings

3) Chunky chips ahoy don't come in sleeves. So our dreams of auto-dispensing cookies from the jacket sleeve didn't pan out.

4) We need to move to Washington

[Szyjakowski]

4a) check out the sierras or colorade....much better...and apparently bigger!

[MCash]

colorade....much better...and apparently bigger!

 

 

Yeah, why would you want to climb the North Ridge of Stuart, when you could hike some sick trail up Mount Elbert. Colorado's mountains make Mount Si seam like a great accomplishment.

[sweatinoutliquor]

Yeah, I have to admit, I almost wanted to bail on the whole trip when I saw that the alleged "Chunkey" chips ahoy had some type of open rigid plastic shell, rather than the sleeve that I expected. Last time I try to switch gear right before a trip without testing it out first.

[sparverius]

4a) check out the sierras or colorade....much better...and apparently bigger!

 

yeah, I'm with you Szyjakowski. The colorado rockies and sierras have some sweet peaks and climbs, but have tiny and unimpressive glaciers. They don't hold a candle to the Cascades when it comes to challenging glacier routes. Are you trying to lure me away from the Cascades?

[tomtom]

several things learned on the trip:

2) could've lightened the rack by a few cams, biners, and slings

What's an appropriate rack?

[sparverius]

I guess an appropriate rack would be different for each party, dependent on climbing styles, experience, etc. We took 10 cams up to a 4 friend, 10 nuts, 3 tri-cams, and a 60m 9.4mm rope.

 

In hindsight, we could have done without the tri-cams, the extra #4 friend, and could have used our 8.6mm 60m rope since it would have been doubled the whole time.

[kurthicks]

we took a half dozen nuts, green aliens to a 3.5", but i would go only to 3" because of the fixed #4 camalot (even the 3" is optional, if you sling the chockstone at the bottom of the offwidth). a 60m half rope is nice. it all depends on your comfort level...