Mt Stuart N Ridge - descent beta

[aikidjoe]

A friend and I are thinking of climbing Stuart via N ridge this weekend. We are thinking of approaching from the N side, and I am looking for beta on descent route to get back to the N side (trying to avoid descend Cascade Coulouir and slogging back around).

 

SummitPost suggests either Sherpa Glacier or Northwest Buttress; I'm guessing Sherpa Glacier is perhaps not in good shape at this point (if anyone knows otherwise please let me know!). All I can find about NW buttress is it's class 3/4 with some rappelling. Can someone point me to more info? Or does anyone have other suggestions?

[cam yarder]

check out this thread:

 

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1032472/Sherpa_Pass_as_a_Descent_from_

 

my friend and i descended sherpa pass after climbing the full ridge last summer and it didn't go quite as quickly as we would have liked. the above thread makes it sound really easy to get to sherpa pass from the summit of stuart so maybe we were a bit sandbagged by the info. if i were to do it over again, i would just approach/descend from the ingalls side. the cascadian is really easy and painless. just turn off your mind and go!

Edited July 10, 2013 by cam yarder

[DPS]

my friend and i descended sherpa pass after climbing the full ridge last summer and it didn't go quite as quickly as we would have liked. the above thread makes it sound really easy to get to sherpa pass from the summit of stuart so maybe we were a bit sandbagged by the info. if i were to do it over again, i would just approach/descend from the ingalls side. the cascadian is really easy and painless. just turn off your mind and go!

 

I've climbed Mt Stuart many times using both approaches and descents. I wouldn't consider descending Sherpa Glacier from the summit of Stuart to be too awful and I wouldn't consider the Cascadian to be painless. Both have their ups and downs.

 

Descending the Sherpa requires boots, an axe, and crampons while in late season you can get away with only approach shoes if you descend the Cascadian.

[cam yarder]

for the sake of clarification, i'm talking about sherpa pass, not the sherpa glacier descent

[telemarker]

for the sake of clarification, i'm talking about sherpa pass, not the sherpa glacier descent

 

To clarify further, you are referring to Sherpa/ Argonaut col.

[telemarker]

And, it's a loooong way over there from the summit of Stuart! Definitely not trivial, but at least the snowfield below the col is low angle and schrund free.

[Blake]

The Sherpa is by far the easiest. If it stays this warm

And you are ok on 40ish degree snow, you will be fine with just tennies. You may need a single rap over the moat. Look for rock

Anchors or stomp out a quick bollard.

[aikidjoe]

Blake - just to be clear, you're referring to Sherpa glacier, not Sherpa pass?

[Blake]

Yes, the glacier. And I wrote moat, but it's the bergschrund that I meant to describe, which is generally the first obstacle that appears as things open up. There are some slabs that run with water down toward the bottom, just take a look from below and figure out your line so you'll have it dialed on the way down.

[kurthicks]

We descended this yesterday and tried a new variation to the traditional Sherpa descent that I'd seen some anchors on previously.

 

We walked one major notch east/past the Sherpa Glacier col to an existing rap station (blue webbing on a horn). We did 3 raps straight down, scrambled about 200' across an easy ledge (east to a slung block with green cord), then did about 5 more raps (down and to rappeller's left) to just above the 'schrund...then did one downclimb (lower first person over schrund, then down climb easily with the one set of axe/pons). all raps are done with a single 60m rope and are mostly rope stretchers. we wandered down the Sherpa medial moraine from there, avoiding the rest of the steep snow.

 

the raps are rubble strewn down low, but the anchors are bomber.

[AlpineK]

Two short raps then downclimb the West Ridge. It seemed to work out fine when we did it.