[TR] Mt. Stuart - Direct NW Face 8/2/2008

[Tom Furst]

Trip: Mt. Stuart - Direct NW Face

 

Date: 8/2/2008

 

Trip Report:

With every trip, there is a story. This story is about finding unnecessary suffering in a place of impeccable beauty. The place: Mt. Stuart, Northern Cascades. Nothing gets me more excited about climbing than a fantastic picture or story. I saw a photo of the Direct Northwest Face of Mt. Stuart in Alan Kearney’s book 50 Classic Climbs. The picture shows a long-haired hippie liebacking up a corner comparable to Squamish’s Split Pillar, but high up a massive face with the Stuart Glacier far below. I had decided then and there I wanted to climb it.

 

Fast forward to August 2008. Willis, Pierre and I had recently been climbing in France together and had planned to get together to do some alpine climbing back in BC before the summer was out. We decided to use the BC Day long weekend to celebrate what BCer’s are all about: getting out of town to do some mountaineering. Naturally, we fled the country and went to Washington. Pierre bailed out at the last minute from work constraints, similar to last year’s BC Day long weekend when I did the same. Willis and I planned to climb without Pierre. We had a leisurely three days to knock off the peak. No problem.

 

Plan: Drive to Leavenworth early Saturday morning. Approach via Stuart Lake Trail (a walk in the park!) and up a gully to the toe of the Stuart Glacier on Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning we would get an alpine start and cross small glacier to the beginning of climb. Then we’d climb a stiff 5.10+ warmup first pitch to get the blood flowing. Continue climbing up the face for another 5 pitches to the base of the “long perfect corner” as described by Kearney in his topo which I traced onto a single piece of paper to save weight. Then climb the “long perfect corner” in ecstacy with occasional yelping and wahoo-ing of joy. Continue to the summit up some more 5.10- followed by lots of 3rd and 4th simul-climbing. Descend the Cascadian Couloir. Hike back over a pass and back to camp. Hike back out to the car. Sounds easy…except maybe that 5.10+ start…at least that’s what I thought. Then we had all Monday to do some local cragging.

 

The reality: Apparently we weren’t the only BCer’s fleeing on the BC Day long weekend. We arrived at the Peace Arch border crossing at 6:30 am to find a 3-hour lineup ahead of us. This was compounded by the fact that the Sea-to-Sky Highway had been closed for 4 days prior to our departure from a rockslide and there was nowhere else to escape to. Not a good start. But that’s o.k. because the approach is apparently easy! Now Willis is the first to admit he’s kind of a hippie, and I think the border guards thought Willis and I were drug-smuggling, up-to-no-good Canadian tree huggers. We got pulled in for some more questioning: “Are you sure there are no narcotics in the vehicle?”

 

With that over with, we could finally continue on the 3.5 hour drive on towards Leavenworth. After a leisurely stop at “Deals Only” in Bellingham, a warehouse of either tainted or expired goods at low prices, we had a good supply of figs and energy bars. Did I mention it was cheap?

 

It was getting late and we had to stop at the Ranger Station in Leavenworth to get permits to be in the drainage. We arrived 10min before closing and were lucky to get a map and some permits. We had the green light…better get moving!

 

At just after 6pm we left the full carpark. I stashed a few celebratory beers in the creek, obviously anticipating our easy success of the route. With a forecast of only sun, we left our goretex in the car and left wearing only shorts, t-shirts and big grins on our faces. Happy-go-lucky would be a suitable adjective.

 

The trail was beautiful. It was like a trail in a postcard. It was smooth, a little windy, beside a nice creek, the trail was well built, not too steep, not too flat, and had huge jagged granite peaks at its headwaters.

“Climbing in the Cascades is downright pleasant,” I said repeatedly on the approach. “If only BC trails were maintained this well climbing there would be a piece of piss.” A deer even walked towards us to within 20 ft.

The only other alpine route I have done in Washington is the N. Ridge of Mt. Baker, which also has a beautiful trail for an approach. After two hours we reached Stuart Lake. It was a magnificent spot, but we carried on because it was getting dark. We wanted to try and setup our bivi before we lost all light.

We continued on, getting glimpses of the approach gully to the toe of the glacier. It looked steep and appeared to spit you out below blue ice and open crevasses on the glacier. The blue ice was a little unsettling, since we had elected to leave our crampons at the car to save weight. With temperatures so high we figured we wouldn’t need them. Oops. We took a gander at the map to see if there was a way around.

 

We setup a premature bivi at the end of the meadows southwest of Stuart Lake, where the trail starts to ascend westward to Horseshoe Lake. We decided to bivi here and sacrifice a longer approach in the dark the following morning. We setup Willis’ mosquito net for a shelter, which worked magnificently. Willis and I cooked some macaroni with chick pea curry-in-a-bag and hit the hay. We both slept exceptionally well, seeing as the route the next days was nothing to be worried about.

 

At 4am our alarms sounded and we were hiking by 5am. We elected to hike more indirectly up to Horseshoe Lake and then traverse the headwaters to the Stuart Glacier in order to avoid ascending the gulley below the glacier. The terrain on the map looked simpler, though it would add a little extra time – which we thought we had lots of.

 

We were treated to a fantastic sunrise over Horseshoe Lake.

We arrived at the Stuart Glacier and traversed above the crevaces to the start of the route without difficulty despite the stiff snow and no crampons.

It still drops to below zero on the north face even on the warmest summer nights.

 

Willis roped up first and delicately crossed the deep gap between the glacier and the toe of the northwest face. It was chilly and we were in the shade. Some seepage on the face was totally frozen, along with Willis’ hands. He slowly climbed up a short pitch to the base of the 5.10+ arching finger crack in his mountaineering boots. I followed but elected to wear gloves to retain some finger warmth. I geared up for the next pitch beside a large pocket of snow still attached to the face. A couple of bouldery moves up a corner gave way to a nice ramp that led to the base of the finger crack. The first part was easy, so I ran out the gear until I reached the crack. Once in the finger crack, I threw in gear every couple meters until I reach a point below a small roof where I could pull out right for a brief rest. Then I climbed back into the crack and pulled through fantastic finger locks to the belay. Phew. That was fantastic. Willis followed and arrived with an ear-to-ear grin on his face. He was happy to be climbing coastal granite again. Willis led up through some bulges to a mossy corner.

He cruised through it without problem. We then shortened the rope and simul-climbed up the path of least resistance, looking for a “flaring chimney” as described by Kearny that would leave to a ramp out left to the base on the “long perfect corner”.

 

 

We ended up at the base on a long crack and chimney that led up diagonally right and ended at this corner. The pitch definitely didn’t match Kearney’s topo, but was a delightful 5.8 variation that I highly recommend to anyone climbing the route.

 

Then the corner. Wow. It was indeed long and perfect. Almost a replica of the Split Pillar on the Squamish Chief, except facing left instead of right, the corner is a beautiful lieback finger crack on the upper northwest face. It’s fantastically clean and wildly exposed. It was Willis’ turn to lead. Lucky bastard.

Willis giggled his way up and I followed.

 

Drool...

 

We elected to haul our bags up this pitch so we could even further ‘enjoy’ this stunning pitch. Unfortunately our packs didn’t enjoy being hauled so much and my beloved climbing pack is in need of about 7 patches. At the end of his pitch, Willis pulled out left to a diagonal ramp. I led the next awkward pitch up a flaring chimney and then straight up through a couple small overhangs. Willis then led up a beautiful set of arching cracks to a cruxy undercling traverse left at the top, followed by some runout slab. Another nice pitch. We shortened the ropes again and simul-climbed a fair distance to the summit. Probably the equivalent of another 6 pitches. We topped out almost directly on the summit.

 

We were treated to crystal clear views of the volcanoes: Baker, Rainier and Adams could all be seen from the summit. We ate some lunch and signed into the overflowing summit register box, similar to the overflowing trailhead parking lot the previous afternoon. It was all downhill from here - just scramble down the Cascadian Couloir and then traverse back around the mountain to our bivi. It was about 4:30 pm. We chatted briefly to another party on the summit who had just finished the West Ridge. They were also descending the Cascadian Couloir, so we watched them scramble down to a rappel station and decided we’d follow them after we ate.

After some summit panorama shots, we scrambled down to the rappel station where we last saw the two climbers begin their descent.

We setup and tossed our ropes, beginning the descent into the gully. After one rappel, we were able to continue scrambling down a loose steep, downright unpleasant gully. The going got steeper and we traverse out of the gully to see if we couldn’t find an easier way passed a steep section. No luck. We setup another two rappels on some extra prussiks and slings until we could continue down-climbing the gully. Fatigue was starting to set in, and I had to consciously focus on checking loose foot and hand holds. Where did those two climbers go? We couldn’t see them further down the winding gully. They must have been moving fast. We continued down further, only to get cliffed out again. I setup another long rappel, followed by more down-climbing. We were only halfway down the gully and the sun was beginning to lie low on the horizon. The scrambling looked easier ahead. We scrambled some more, and it appeared we were almost home free, so we took off our harnesses and packed up the ropes. Unfortunately we were cliffed out two more times and had to do yet another two rappels. This Cascadian Couloir is way more effort than Kearney described. Clearly, we had descended the wrong couloir. We almost laughed at how we were thwarted at nearly every bend in the gully. We could now see a clear path down scree into the timber. We continued through fairly open forest until we hit the trail. We both let out a sigh of relief. It was after 8 pm and we were a long way from our bivi, let alone the parking lot. It appeared that we’d have to bivi another night. Good thing I had a little extra soup we could have for dinner back near Stuart Lake.

 

We followed the trail towards Ingalls Lake and passed another party who had descended the Cascadian Couloir. After describing our descent to their party leader, they concluded that we definitely weren’t in the right couloir. So which couloir did we descend? The Ulrich Couloir perhaps?

 

We nearly ran into a small porcupine at dusk, which proudly showed us how the spines on his ass could stand outward like a sea urchin. The trail was a welcomed rest from route finding in the gully. We got into a rhythm and worked our way up to Stuart Pass. It was now 10pm and dark. We looked up at the col near the west ridge, where we’d have to cross to return to our bivi. It looked like a long way up. And the descent down the other side wasn’t technical, but would require energy and concentration as to not fall down the steep talus boulders or in the narrow gully below. Were we really up for this grind in the dark? I was bagged and was certain it would take likely another 4 hours to get back to camp. Should we hunker down here and wait it out until morning? I’d never had to do that before without a sleeeping bag or mat, but exhaustion got the best of us. We decided to wait it out until morning and then do the descent in the light, and hopefully we'd be feeling a little fresher.

 

 

It was one of the most unpleasant nights in memory, despite the fact that millions of stars and the milky way lit up the sky. I put on my extra wool sweater and long underwear, toque and gloves. “Good thing I am prepared,” I thought. Could we light a fire to stay warm? The fire hazard was extreme and fires were banned in the general area. We could probably go to jail if we were caught. Do my work benefits cover things like that?

 

Willis and I shivered in spoon position, using a rope each as a pillow. My ultralight pack had no foam to protect me from the hard cold ground. My hips and elbows would ache in pain after about ½ hour on my side. I did my best to lie in one position for about one hour in order to keep warm and not disturb Willis’. Then we would complete a coordinated roll so that I would be the little spoon and Willis would be the big spoon. Having the extra body heat definitely helped with warmth. Willis had an emergency hot pack that he tucked between his legs to help him stay warm as he had no long underwear to to put on. The night passed by ever so slowly. After what seemed like hours I asked Willis the time during a roll-over. Only 11:15pm. Fuck me…it was going to be a long night. Maybe we should just pack up and start hiking now anyway. At least I’d be warmer.

 

The night passed excruciatingly slowly, as I violently shivered in the fetal position. Willis drifted in and out of sleep and I could feel him come in and out of shivering spells. 2am. 3am. 4am…almost light. 5am and it was light enough to move. I’m not sure how much I slept if at all.

 

We ate a few leftover bars and I could barely get them into my mouth I was shivering so violently. At least I knew that shivering meant I was still pre-hypothermic. The sooner we got moving the sooner I knew I’d warm up, so my bag was packed and I was ready about 2 min after deciding to ‘wake up’. Besides, I didn’t have much to pack anyway.

 

We headed up towards Mt. Stuart from Stuart Pass and the long haul up scree and talus ahead of us didn’t look pleasant. I stared at the ridgeline west of Mt. Stuart and noticed a moderate slope with a few trees, covered in heather. It looked a lot more pleasant, and looked as if gaining that ridge crest would put us directly above Horseshoe Lake, which wasn’t far from our gear. Willis noticed it too. We pulled out the map and made the quick decision to try heading in this other direction. It looked far more pleasant, and given our hazy state, would be more safe. We descended back to where we slept and descended over the other side of Stuart Pass into the valley. We veered off the trail near the toe of a massive rock avalanche track, chock full of huge boulders. We slowly traversed up the heathery slope at a slow and steady pace. We were both quiet and tired as we settled into a hiking rhythm.

The sun was rising from the opposite side of the ridge. We followed small goat trails and after several hours reached a pass in the ridge that would drop us into Horseshoe Creek. I arrived a minute before Willis. Something didn’t look right. Where was the lake? Where was the Stuart Glacier? Neither were there. I pulled out the map only to find out we’d traversed too far. We were in a pass for the next drainage, and had overshot our target by roughly 1km. Our fatigue was definitely affecting our concentration, since both of us are experienced in navigation. “I’ve got good new and bad news,” I told Willis. “The good news is that we’ve reached the pass. And, the bad news is that it’s the wrong pass.” Willis laughed. It was about all he could do.

 

We turned around and hiked back about one kilometer to another, much less obvious notch in the ridgeline. I approached the ridge, almost expecting a few rappels or some sort of obstacle that would thwart us yet again. That seemed to be the theme for the previous 24 hrs. I looked steeply downward into the drainage. I could see Horseshoe Lake and the Stuart Glacier. And to boot, I could see a safe descent that we could scramble down. I was relieved. From here on, we at least knew there were no major hurdles in our way. Just several more hours of hiking. We stopped to eat the last of our food and drink the last of our water. We whipped together two open-face bagels, smothered in cream cheese, topped with the remaining pieces of a Lindt hazelnut chocolate bar and some brie cheese to top it off. It was a thing of beauty. It’s probably a food combo I will never assemble again.

We hiked down to Horseshoe Lake and down to our bivi site. We snacked on some remaining food, though I was surprisingly not too hungry. I removed my boots for the first time since we topped out on Stuart the previous day. They smelled of Ammonia, apparently caused when you burn more calories than you ingest, and your body begins to break down protein to fuel your energy requirements. Or, more simply put, when you get sandbagged.

 

The hike out was pleasantly uneventful. After two hours we reached the car and I scrambled down to the creek to fetch the beers I had stashed the afternoon before last. We celebrated with a beer each and a swim in Icicle Creek. And finally, the journey home.

 

 

 

Gear Notes:

Free rack to 3.5".

Edited August 13, 2008 by Tom Furst

[DRep]

Good God that route looks sick. That was my partner Jesse and I who you met on the summit. You weren't kidding about how sick that route is! Sorry about the epic return to the car. You did descend down Ulrichs. We got a little lost trying to find the cascadian and had to climb back up. We actually never had to make a rappel, I decided against rapping off a death block sitting on sand! We heard you yell from the summit but saw you on rappel and assumed you were OK. There definitely are not any raps in the Cascadian, it's just looooooong . Your epic return to the car makes ours without water sound pretty easy. We got home around 3:30am (thank you Adderol). Good job boys, can't wait to do that route!

Edited August 10, 2008 by DRep

[sobo]

As most people who get on Stuart for their first time, you were indeed sandbagged. Welcome to the Unplanned Bivy Club! Glad you had a nice time.

[lunger]

Entertaining write-up. When I read, "...was all downhill from here - just scramble down the Cascadian Couloir and then traverse back around the mountain to our bivi. It was about 4:30 pm. " I thought, here we go...big mtn, you would've been hard pressed to make it in daylight if you knew the route back.

 

That is a great "short" route on Stuart, with a nice variety of alpine climbing. Thanks for the re-visit.

[olyclimber]

Incredible pics, great story. Thanks Tom.

 

 

There is way more than a thousand words here in this one alone.

[spotly]

Nicely written report and great pics. Thanks for sharing.