Mt. Stuart – Complete North Ridge (Attempt) – 7/6-8/2017

Mt. Stuart from the mountaineer creek drainage

The complete north ridge of mount Stuart has been on my to-do list for as long as said list has existed. However, I've always been a bit intimidated. It's a big route: 3000 feet of technical climbing up to 5.9; at least ten belayed pitches and lots of simul-climbing. If you really look at the details, though, it isn't such a committing climb. Can't pull the crux moves on the lower ridge? No big deal. You're only 2-3 pitches up. Exhausted, benighted, or otherwise stymied on the upper ridge? You can either retreat back to the upper-ridge access gully, or take the north side bypass. Again, no big deal. Just bring crampons.

Grace and I hiked in from the north on the evening of the 6th, and made camp much lower in Mountaineer creek than I had hoped for, ca. 5000'. The mosquitos were intense. We were moving by first light the following morning, but it was still 09:00 by the time we reached the base of the route. Our approach followed a line of cairns that leads you on a high traverse across many boulder fields to reach the basin beneath the Sherpa glacier. I don't recommend it. The climbers path near the stream is much more straightforward, and has the added virtue of being easy to follow in the dark.

Grace on pitch 3

The climbing on the lower ridge went very much as Beckey describes (east-side variation). 5-6 pitches of mid 5th class, plus lots and lots of low 5th and 4th class terrain above, taking 6 hours to reach the notch, and the beginning of the upper ridge.

The quality of the climbing on those first ~6 pitches cannot be overstated. Every bit of it was wonderful. The two opening crux pitches get all the attention, but those above were stellar as well. The first pitch goes at good clean 5.7 until the very last couple of moves, where you have to squeeze past an awkward overhang that pushes you out of the crack onto thin face holds (5.8). If you're scared, like me, you can stuff a #4 camalot into the crack and aid through it. Pitch 2 is super short and easy. Pitch 3 is the crux of the lower ridge: a perfect splitter crack that goes at sustained 5.8 with 3 distinct 5.9 sections. Most of it is secure jamming, but in the crux sections it pushes you out into thin lineback moves. The whole thing protects beautifully, and any/all of the hard bits can be aided.

Before starting up this pitch I scouted right along a broken ledge, looking for the 5.8 variation that Kearny touts. Don't do it. All I found was wide cracks and thick black lichen. Moreover, his contention that the beautiful thin crack has poor protection is false. Perhaps this was true in the 70s, with the gear available at the time, and before all the dirt and moss had been cleaned out by thousands of ascents. Today it is one of the cleanest, safest pitches I've ever climbed

High on pitch 4

The following 3-4 pitches are just a blur of white granite in my memory: super fun 5.6-5.7 climbing with many options. After completing the belayed pitches we did two long simul-blocks. The first is more or less on the ridge-crest, but then a steep step in the ridge pushed us off to the north side, and the route became less obvious. I found myself playing follow-the-sun, on the principle that those troughs that had sunlight streaming down them had to be lower angle, with breaks in the frowning steepness above. It's possible we could have kept closer to the crest, but I wanted to keep moving, and not resort to a fixed belay.

We'd run out of water in the first simul-block, so follow-the-sunshine quickly morphed into follow-the-water-streaks. At 15:00 we found snow just below the "notch", and stopped to refill. We were both tired, but after the hydration break felt ready to complete the climb. However, by the time we'd melted 8 liters of water it was after 16:00, and it was clear that if we pushed on we'd be bivvying on or near the summit. Not a recipe for returning to Grandview by the following afternoon as we had promised. So we made the responsible decision: bail down the upper-ridge access gully onto the stuart glacier.

The view north

The notch/gully were surprisingly hard to find: I had assumed that the access gully terminated at a large obvious notch in the main ridge-crest. That's the way it looks on the map, and that's how people talk about it. In reality the gully terminates at a subsidiary notch between the main ridge crest and an ancillary tower. The area is best recognized by a collection of sandy ledges below the crest that support many bivy sites and snow patches. The main ridge crest remains sharp and rocky. We were already a couple hundred feet above and passed this location when I realized my error, and we had to climb back down to reach it.

Stuart glacier, sunset.

One 30 m rappel put us on the snow which was steep, but in good condition for down-climbing: firm, but just soft enough to kick good steps in. We were very thankful for our mountaineering boots at this point, as the traversing nature of the terrain would make rapelling the whole thing nearly impossible. Nevertheless, we should have brought crampons as well. Near the bottom of the gully Grace took a short but scary slide that nearly landed her in the moat. After that we roped up, and proceeded out onto the Stuart glacier, which is a steeper bit of ice than I remembered. The going was very slow as we picked our way down and across it, careful to avoid any further miss-steps. Full darkness fell just as we reached treeline and we followed a combination of stream, climbers path, and GPS back to our tent.

All in all, a wonderful climb. Just the lower ridge was one of the best rock climbs I've ever done. On par with the south face of Prusik for quality, but slightly less technical and a lot longer. We will be back.

PHOTOS