[TR] Stuart's North Basin - Sherpa West Ridge (part way, anyway) 4/2/2008

[tvashtarkatena]

Trip: Stuart's North Basin - Sherpa West Ridge (part way, anyway)

 

Date: 4/2/2008

 

Trip Report:

TR: Sherpa West Ridge Mar 31-April 3, 2008

 

 

Ascending the Sherpa Glacier

 

 

“We just made a big Smiley Face”

 

My usual autonomic response to Ivan’s background radiation of non-sequiturs is to stare back, cow eyed, hoping he’ll assume that the filament within has long since gone dark, but instead I looked down, and sure enough, our 700 foot end run around an impasse on the Stuart/Sherpa ridge looked exactly like the Shit Eating Grin of the Mountain Gods. We had certainly eaten a lot of shit to create it.

 

You move sixteen tons of snow and whaddaya get? Four days with a Beowulf spouting mutant giant from a broken future. Four days stuck on snow shoes plowing through mile after mile of perfect, knee deep pow pow like some forlorn, underpowered river tug straining the haul The Colossus of Rhodes up the Amazon at full flood stage without the benefit of a barge. Four days thinking about all my hip friends spending their well earned, well turned après-ski time plying bored board bunnies with Belgian barley wine, a vaporizer decaled with Grenade stickers, and a feigned appreciation for the genius of Radiohead.

 

Sure, we knew there’d be fresh snow when we decided to go into Stuart basin to climb the Ice Cliff, or Stuart Glacier couloir, or, well, actually, we hadn’t really discussed it much. We thought that the Stuart Range might scintillate with a delightful dusting. We didn’t know we’d have to plow the equivalent of I 90 in both directions.

 

Moving through thigh deep snow:

 

1) Lean forward and make an impression with your knee.

2) High step into the depression, shift weight to high stepped leg, extend leg

3) Wait until sinking ceases

4) Yell “Motherfucker!”

5) Repeat with opposite leg

 

Our first morning in Stuart Basin began with two ignored alarms. It was 10 degrees out. After hammering our feet into our frozen boots we settled into a trail breaking excursion up the Sherpa Glacier, in preparation for an expedition style assault on the West Ridge.

 

We were immediately greeted by a steady current of moth ball sized rolly pollies flowing down gravity’s river, courtesy of the sunlit slopes above the glacier. Keeping to the glacier’s center as much as possible, we continued punching until we reached the bergschrund beneath the Sherpa Glacier couloir (the one on climber’s right), turned around, and slogged back to camp.

 

 

Rolly Pollies (Sherpa Glacier)

 

82oGFKzknXQ

 

The Film, soundtrack by Ivan

 

 

 

Human snow plow (Sherpa Glacier)

 

 

 

Stuart from camp

 

 

The following day we awoke early and in earnest, pre-packed for Sherpa’s West Ridge. The ascent up our previous day’s steps went quickly. Wading up the couloir not so quickly. Trying the run the ridge over to Sherpa not quickly at all, due to an impassable step. We descended 700 feet and re-ascended in the bright, windless spring sunshine through increasingly heavy glop to the Sherpa’s west notch, giving birth to our Smiley Face in the process.

 

 

Ascending the Sherpa Glacier couloir

 

 

 

Mmmmmm…Cliff Shot (Sherpa Glacier couloir)

 

 

 

“I’d rather be skiing”

 

 

After climbing a few pitches, we did the math, and began rapping back down. Our detour had cost us too much time. I blamed Ivan. He blamed me. Eventually, we agreed to blame the Baby Jebus.

 

 

Rapping Sherpa’s West Ridge

 

Rather than retrace our Smiley Face (which by then was streaked with more wet slides than Britney has mascara runs), or run the ridge back to the top of the Sherpa Glacier couloir via a hidden snow gulley we spied from our new vantage point, we decided to rap into Sherpa’s west ridge couloir (the one on climber’s left) and make a quick descent, hopefully before several overhanging cornices decided to tag along.

 

 

Rapping past a foppish pompadour of snow and into the West Ridge couloir

 

 

 

Ivan photographing me watching Ivan photographing me watching….

 

 

 

Descending the West Ridge couloir

 

 

The couloir was so much deeper and less consolidated than our ascent couloir that it would have been almost impossible to climb, so I suppose our day’s fate was as it should have been.

 

The pleasant current of rolly pollies from the day before had become a flood sometime during the afternoon; two large wet slides had obliterated our tracks down half the Sherpa Glacier's length.

 

 

Sherpa-Stuart ridge from the Sherpa Glacier

 

 

The following morning Ivan had mysteriously sprouted a second degree burn blister on the knuckle of his right hand. I had heard incessant rubbing in the night, but tried to put it out of my mind. Emergency field surgery was called for.

 

 

 

Emergency field surgery: Spyderco meets mysterious knuckle blister

 

 

The patient’s recovery was swift, so we trudged a couple of hundred yards to the South and spent our last morning cragging on a 15 meter ice fall the color of an AM/PM toilet seat that Ivan referred to as the Champagne Flow before heading home.

 

 

 

Effervescing up the Champagne Flow

 

 

 

Ice fangs

 

 

On our way out we ran into an AT skier and a snowboarder.

 

"How was the skiing?" Ivan asked.

 

"Oh man, I probably had the best powder runs of my life."

 

Oh yeah? Well fuck you and the Smiley Face you rode in on, buddy.

Edited April 4, 2008 by tvashtarkatena

[NoahT]

We were thinking about SGC this weekend...On one hand, now a nice trail is punched up to camp. On the other it sounds like even getting from camp to the couloir, then up and down, would be a trip in and of itself. Fun TR, thanks!

[ivan]

10 degrees out in a 32 degree bag = yummy

 

very enjoyable climbing snow plastered loose rock on the ridge in plastic boots - beacon rock in fall and winter proves a great simulator of such suck conditions

 

freeze dried lasagna > chicken terayaki > dog poo > beef stew

 

rappelling over, under and through godzilla sized cornices is a great way to get in touch with the savage jesus

 

which one of you wierd fucks left the "into the wild" sappish-make-fuck-with-nature message near the colchuck lake cutoff? i'm still scrubbing my brain with a steel-wool brush trying to etch out the encrusted cheese...

 

one of these days i'm going to go somewhere in the stuart range where i can follow a trail the whole damn way

[Bug]

So..... this is a TR about two failed attempts?

 

Cheers guys.

 

Way to get out there and slog!

[ivan]

So..... this is a TR about two failed attempts?

 

no, i never attempted to seduce tvash - he's too hairy and ill-tempered for me

[tvashtarkatena]

We don't think in terms of 'failure' or 'success'. We prefer 'shortened agenda', or 'performing service work'.

 

 

[Bug]

Uh huh.

How many bivy bags were there?

[grtmtnchic]

Great writing and pics

[JayB]

Awesome TR.

 

You've definitely got a knack for the Largo-esque prose and that, along with the stellar photos, makes for a great contribution to the site.

 

 

 

 

[powdherb]

Looks like nice pow there. Too bad you forgot your skis. They may have prevented slog.

[tvashtarkatena]

I didn't forget them; I left them at the road end and switched to snowshoes. I'd just picked them up (Craigslist) that morning; a pair of 120 cm x 120 mm approach skis with bizarro generic backcountry bindings, and I was unfamiliar with their strange ways, so I limited their use to the road. I also didn't have a pair of full climbing skins for them yet (they come with funky permanent kicker skins, which are definitely going bye bye), so they would have been useless for ascending the steeps anyway.

 

Next trip in to that area, I'll have full skins and some heel lifters for these puppies, because they're pretty well suited for deep snow climbing approaches that involves tight, pain in the ass terrain like Mountaineer's Creek.

[Doug]

This whole mid-week TR thing, summit objective achieved or not makes me green with envy. The hating won't last forever, but for now it is all I have.

[tvashtarkatena]

Every moment, midweek or not, is pregnant with the possibility of becoming.

 

 

Or sum shit.

[Pain Is Good]

I would gladly move sixteen tons of snow for one less mosquito bite in any given day.

[Bug]

So now you're pregnant?

[mike1]

Looks like good time even without a summit.

[ivan]

seems a shame not to have at least a token picture of rock climbin in w/ all those others - no doubt tvash can 'shop it up a bit and insert a few moons and bacon-bits to make it tastier

**** removed to protect the innocent ******

feel free to give me shit for frenching on the piece while clipping it - my interest in falling on a single 8 mm cord in the middle of fuck was quite low

 

koflachs - so hawt for edging!

Edited April 8, 2008 by ivan

[tvashtarkatena]

Goddamnit Ivan, NO RAW PHOTOS!!!!!11111

 

There, that's better:

 

[moronbros]

Sweet job guys. It takes quite a bit of control to walk through something like that knowing there aren't skis tethered to your body for the descent. nice pics too.

 

BTW how far can you get up the road right now? Do I need to steal a snow cat and charge all the way to the parking lot?

[ivan]

the road's gated and probably won't be open for business for a few weeks at least

[Sherri]

Great TR, guys! Enjoyed the fine writing and beautiful-as-always pics. That one of the "blister" made me do a double take. Thought it was one of Coulior's avatars for a second there....

 

 

 

 

[Matthew]

Anybody have any info on the road conditions to Mountaineer Creek TH of for this weekend? I was hoping the road might be passible in a truck with chains up to the trailhead. Not everyone in my party would have skis and skins, and that road hike sucks.

 

Excellent TR... I was commiserating heartily from having suffered the same fate on a February attempt a few years ago. Snow shoes + waist deep slog in pow + 8 mile approach = climbers too disheartened to attempt sketchy couloir. The icing on the cake was when my sleeping pad busted and I spent a nice sub zero night sleeping on a coiled rope... DAMN YOU MOUNT STUAAAAART!

[kevino]

you can drive to the TH is what my friend told me

[Tennessee]

We climbed the West Ridge of Sherpa on Friday 5/30. The approach was basically snow free until just before reaching the 5400 ft bench beneath the Sherpa glacier. We had to take the right-hand couloir above the Sherpa glacier to get to the ridge (as opposed to the left-hand couloir which would have taken us closer to Sherpa Peak, but it had a steep spot that had melted out). The rest of the route was on excellent rock with a few minor loose bits, snow free, and really enjoyable. The strangest thing though . . . the summit was covered in thousands of ladybugs. I've never seen anything like it.

 

We also saw a couple other guys at camp, Sol being one of them, they had climbed the Stuart Glacier couloir. They said that a section had melted out, which they bypassed by rock climbing.

[Sol]

ladybug photo?