Stuart Conditions - Sherpa Glacier

[jstluise]

We're looking to climb something this coming weekend and Stuart is on our list. We've never climbed it before and I have looked into the Sherpa Glacier route in the past, but I don't know the condition of the route this time of year.

 

How is the Sherpa Glacier route looking right now? If it still is climbable, is there anything we should look out for?

 

If not, we'll look for another mountain; seems like all the other routes on Stuart are for you rock climbers

[Marko]

There's still quite a bit of white on it and not much exposed glacial ice. The 'shrund looked pretty open. You may have some shenanigans getting over it, but I only walked in as far as the meadow so couldn't really tell. I couldn't see the top out so don't how dry it is.

 

There didn't appear to be any dirty streaks from rockfall on the route but I did hear a pretty good rockfall event coming from the Ice Cliff Glacier cirque.

 

Start early before the sun hits it of course...

 

Cheers

[jstluise]

Thanks for the info. I think we'll give it a shot and see what happens. It'll be nice just to get up close to Stuart since I've never been.

 

IF we manage to summit, we do have the option of descending via Sherpa Pass (after reading the recent thread about this). This depends on the condition of the Sherpa Glacier. My guess is that Sherpa Pass will be better to descend.

 

I was originally thinking of camping in the basin below the Sherpa Glacier, since we would be heading out of Seattle Friday afternoon. But, because of the possibility of descending the Sherpa Pass we would have to carry everything to avoid backtracking to get our stuff in the basin (even though it would only be a couple miles extra). Now I am thinking we just crash in the parking lot and leave real early Sat morning, fast and light. Thoughts?

 

Not sure on the time from car to summit, but we can expect around 6 hours from summit to car (via Sherpa Pass) based on the other posting.