[TR] Mount Stuart- Stuart Glacier Couloir 5/13/2006

[Gary_Yngve]

Climb: Mount Stuart-Stuart Glacier Couloir

 

Date of Climb: 5/13/2006

 

Trip Report:

Aaron Zabriskie and I hiked in early Saturday past Stuart Lake to check out the Stuart Glacier Couloir.

 

 

It was quite the slog to the base of the couloir.

 

 

We scooted around the bergschrund on the right.

 

 

The couloir was in great shape,

 

 

and the bottleneck even had a little ice.

 

 

After the bottleneck, the couloir opened up again.

 

 

I don't have any pictures from the west ridge due to lack of inspiration, crappy composition (belays often out of view of the action), and wanting to move fast. So here's the description:

 

After topping out onto the west ridge, Aaron went a little down and around a small tower to the West Ridge Notch. This was just scrambling, but a little tricky due to thin snow and ice. Then I went up nice rock and turned to the north side, where I encountered soft snow mostly covering rock, making for tricky climbing. When the pitch steepened, I turned right back to the crest to belay.

We topped out from the Stuart Glacier Couloir behind the triangular tower in the foreground. And it looks like there's a smudge on my lens. Eff.

 

 

Aaron then led up pair of cracks (hand and fist) on a slab that took him to another belay on the crest. I then dropped a little down and crossed the south side until I found something I felt like climbing -- a short but steep step that I recognized when I was up there two years ago with Ania. But this time I had boots instead of rockshoes, and the top four feet of the crack were iced. After a lot of cursing and groveling and pulling off a tool, I cleared the bulge. Aaron took the final pitch to the summit, a finger crack on a slab with a fixed pin.

 

Token summit shot toward the Enchantments:

 

 

We were on top, but it was still a long way down. We frontpointed down sections of steep hard snow going from the summit to the false summit, as well as the top of the Sherpa Glacier Couloir. The hike out was especially grueling, due to a combination of my residual cough from the flu two weeks ago, the accursed break-a-leg hidden holes on the bootpath, and the general exhaustion / lack of food and water. We didn't have the energy to drive home that night, so we crashed at the Plains Rest Stop until first light.

 

Thanks for a good trip, Aaron!

[pms]

dreamy looking. awesome pictures dood. way better than that other TR.

[scottgg]

Yeah, nice job Gary and Aaron. Your TR inspired me to do the route, but I would have appreciated some bigger buckets in the couloir

[mountainhesh]

Good job having the camera out, those are some really good pictures. That looks like absolute cascade-fun mountaineering!

[goatboy]

Where are the blue windpants?