Mt. Stuart, North Ridge

By: Mark Anderson | Climbers: Mark Anderson, Bobby Gomez |Trip Dates: September 6, 2001

Photo: Gary Clark

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Bobby and I, along with another friend, Adam Lowry, had "attempted" to climb this route once before. I say "attempted," because we never even got on the route. It was Memorial Day weekend, 2000, and the Wenatchee range was hit by a late season storm. The primary objective for the outing was to suffer in preparation for our upcoming Mt. Waddington expedition, so despite dismal prospects we proceeded towards Goat Pass at sunrise on Saturday morning. At 8:00 Sunday Morning we began the long retreat from the pass amidst 60 mph winds, having never seen the ridge for the cloud cover.

Now we had returned to avenge our previous defeat.

We left the Esmerelda Basin Trailhead at 7:05 am. Between the two of us we carried one 70 oz camelback, a 60m X 8mm dry rope, and one fanny pack containing five small cams, four slings, a 20' length of webbing to tie a swiss seat, two 4-point instep crampons, six powerbars and assorted trivial emergency items. With our minimal burden we arrived at Goat Pass at 9:20 am.

The plan for traversing Stuart Glacier would have seemed comical if it weren't so dangerous. Each of us would wear one instep crampon (on the left/downhill foot), and carry a sharp, pointy rock as a crude ice axe. Progress was slow even for me, but Bobby, who has relatively little glacier travel experience, was much slower. After a short while I realized Bobby wasn't following my tracks, but traversing higher, where the glacier was slightly steeper. I told him to follow my tracks (where I had "kicked steps" with my Adidas tennis shoes) in order to speed things up. While descending towards my trail, Bobby began sliding uncontrolled down the glacier. The rope came taut as Bobby picked up speed, and I eventually began sliding as well. At some point during the attempt to "self arrest," I dropped my rock, and started digging my fingertips into the snow. After about 10 feet, I was able to arrest the fall. I climbed up to the top of the glacier to a small rock ledge on Stuart's Northwest face, and belayed Bobby for a full rope length. The glacier's steepness eased considerably, and we were able to make much better progress the rest of the way to the couloir. All told, it took us over two and a half hours to gain the ridge from Goat Pass. We arrived at the notch atop the 4th class couloir at five till noon.

Obviously we wasted mountains of time on the glacier. The decision to forgo crampons was based on us not having any strap-on crampons. Bobby and I each have the step-in variety, and didn't want to bring mountain boots; figuring we could make far better time on the 20-something mile approach/descent in tennis shoes. However, I had a lightweight ice tool in the car that I could have easily brought. The ice tool would have made the traverse quite a bit safer, though still would not have been adequate. Crampons are definitely mandatory for this glacier, even if they are simply strapped onto tennis shoes.

Having lost a great deal of time, and not an insignificant amount of momentum, we were determined to get rolling again. We doubled our 8mm rope and simul-climbed the excellent knife-edge ridge. I placed one Camalot Junior between the Couloir and the Gendarme rappel. I felt the route wandered so much between the east and west side of the ridge that any fall would be arrested by counter-balance. There was a stiff wind coming from the west side of the ridge, so I constantly wandered toward the East side of the ridge to keep warm.

At the gendarme Bobby rapped with the Swiss seat and our only belay device, then tied them to the rope for me to haul up and rap with. I placed one more piece of pro on the way to the summit, which we reached at 1:55pm. The climbing was wet in a few spots, with a few small patches of ice, but nothing that couldn't be easily avoided. Much of the rock on this section was dirty and loose, unlike the excellent clean granite that typifies the ridge proper. The summit was surprisingly calm and warm. We basked for a few moments before heading down the first obvious gully. We had to do a couple of easy, unexposed 5th class moves to get down the gully. Right around treeline the gully dumped over an abrupt 100 foot cliff. We found several rap slings, but were able to down climb through small trees about 200 feet east of the gully.

Shortly after exiting the gully we found our way to the Ingalls Creek trail. We ran into two climbers (who planned to climb the ridge the next day) who told us exactly where we were, and how to get to the Long's Pass trail. They were somewhat surprised by our time. Apparently they had just run into two other climbers who spent one night on the ridge and another on the summit. I was shocked that it could take anyone so long to climb such a route, but when we passed the two climbers on the Long's Pass trail 40 minutes later their massive packs said it all.

We made it back to the car at 5:05 pm, exactly 10 hours after we started, glad to have finally bagged the peak that spanked us so rudely on our first "attempt."

The North Ridge of Mt Stuart is an excellent Knife-Edge ridge climb on clean, aesthetic white granite. The quality of rock is astonishing for someone who grew up climbing the crumbling choss piles of the Oregon Cascades. However, this route is reminiscent of the typical (and somewhat unique) Cascade adventure, where the majority of the "climb" is spent just getting to and from the peak. For those climbers who can appreciate beautiful scenery and a brutal workout, this is an outstanding, must-do route.

Editor's Note: The author is a Major Contributor to the North American Classics project.