[TR] Mt Stuart - off route on the west ridge 8/15/2010

[grinter]

Trip: Mt Stuart - off route on the west ridge

 

Date: 8/15/2010

 

Trip Report:

***Disclaimer*** The information presented below is potentially inaccurate and misleading, we were certainly off route at points, any attmepts to follow our footsteps are foolish and you should just climb whatever looks good to you, you'll get there eventually.

 

Ken and I had a "successful" summit on our second attempt at the West Ridge, we had aborted our fourth of july attempt for a quick jaunt up Ingalls, when impending clouds, strong wind and late season snowpack kept us huddled in our bags instead of charging up the route.

 

After bivying past the gorgeous Ingalls Lake Saturday night we began our push after a headlamped party cruised through our camp on their way to the North Ridge. Instead of ascending the couloir immediatly after the scree field, we continued through the trees until we found what surely was the correct gulley and headed up. A couple hundred feet of mild scrambling brought us to a short headwall that had me wanting to rope up but hey its only third class until Long John, so we opted for the climbing shoes and tackled the obstacle, topping out in this gulley well below LJ tower.

 

 

The gulley went easily and we tiptoed across the lingering snowpatch at the base of LJ in our rock shoes thanks to the existing bootpack. We opted for the right hand side and Ken handly climbed in a little corner, while I foolishly lead myself further right out onto the edge with some more exposure and delicate moves.

 

After the tower we were presented with our next routefinding issue: trails led up and down from the LJ notch and multiple weaknesses appeared to lead through the next ridge. Remembering the beta mentioned staying low we headed off on the lower trail and crawled through a squeeze ledge, then opted for a small v-notch.

 

 

After the V we rested here before the final gulley to the summit notch.

 

 

 

We roped up at the notch and led off above some killer bivy ledges until rope drag and a nice ledge had me bringing Ken up. He led off onto a ledge that disapeared onto the North Face. Shortly after h disapeared I heard "piton". excellent, we must be on route. I found the moves above at and above the piton very enjoyable and was able to enjoy this large crack with solid chockstones for the next pitch.

The next pitch led up another corner with some ugly, loose blocks, after gently tapping a few and not liking their wobbly, creaky reponses, I gingerly kicked loose gravel off the few likely footholds and stemmed off the corner to avoid touching anything more than necessary. I brought Ken up here to keep the rope from dragging on the numerous loose blocks and potentially taking him for a ride. We summited on the fifth pitch, isn't supposed to be four? Oh well, we never stretched the rope out and probably could have pulled off our pitches with a doubled half to save some weight. Summit views were glorious.

The most recent entry in the register mentioned how recent rockfall had increased the difficulty of the climb, could have been referring to the loose, nastiness we encountered, but I don't know if that part is even "on-route" and while scary it climbed pretty easily, just don't touch.

 

Our path down the Cascadian proved that the ascent is only half the battle. The scramble to the ridge below the false summit was awesome, but this quickly turned to loose nastiness that continued to irritate has we entered the Cascadian and the sqweeters and black flies started to devour me. I finally relentedand deplyed the Maxi-DEET, i'll take longterm cancer over short term misery any day. Well we finnally crawled out of the bottom of the Casacadian, into a full on thrash towards Ingalls Creek, there's supposed to be a trail somewhere, but thats for folks we enjoy staying onroute. I'd been hoping to make Longs Pass before donning the headlamps, but that wasn't going to happen as we were losing the sun and we hadn't even reached the creek. Apparently we obliviously crossed trail somewhere, because after filling our water bottles and turning on the lamps we just headed uphill towards where Longs Pass. Thrashing in the dark was wearing on us and an inviting soft patch of pine needles proved to be all the incentive we needed to spend another night out, Working on Mondays is for suckers anyways. Of course, in the morning the trail up to Longs Pass proved to be an easy 15 minutes off to our left and the rest of the hike out proved uneventful.

 

Best guess for our route to the summit notch.

 

Gear Notes:

ice ax unnecessary, the two remaining snowpatches were easily crossed in rock shoes

Edited August 17, 2010 by grinter

[TMO]

Great TR! I'm glad I'm not the only one to get corn-fused on that route! A fine outing indeed, regardless off the route taken vs. the route intended. My confusion is always at the summit block. 3 times up, 3 different routes at the summit block, I must ask though, how many hours base to summit?

[112]

Thank for the great trip Ian. I have been wanting to do this for the past 2 years!

 

Something like 39 hours c2c.

 

Grade II, from where???

[grinter]

10 hours from camp to summit

[Rad]

It just needs a via ferrata so everyone can know where to go.

[counterfeitfake]

We did this route Saturday/Sunday. It was awesome! I think it's in perfect condition right now, with a couple snow patches for topping off water while on route.

 

There's an amazing range in the time parties spend on this route. I was expecting two long days, we ended up making it from car to summit in 12 hours, and walked down to a rad bivy site at the top of the Cascadian. Sunday morning was walking back to the car in 5 hours.

 

I think it's all about: how comfortable you are at moving over 3rd and 4th class terrain with no rope, how light you go, and how well you manage the routefinding.

 

We were helped out very greatly by this amazing trip report.

 

I don't know what you climbed obviously, but the normal route goes up the second gulley, whereas you drew on the third gulley.