Mt Stuart: Stuart Glacier Couloir. 04/24/2022
My friend Alex and I climbed Stuart Glacier Couloir on April 23-25 2022. The gate at the bridge was still closed and we had to hike to the Stuart Lake trailhead. We started at 10:20 on Saturday. The lower half of the road was bare, the higher part was still under snow, but was melting fast.
First view of mighty Mount Stuart with Ice Cliff
In Mountaineering Creek we initially followed a skin track, but then we lost and veered too much to the right stepping on a snow covered boulder field. This was a wrong path, we lost time finding our way through boulders and occasiaonally falling into holes between boulders.
Our wrong approach way
We should stay about 200 feet to the left. Eventually we corrected our mistake and regain skin track again. We came to the camp site at 7:40. It took us more than 7 hours of approach. We met skiers that skied down Sherpa Glacier. We noticed avalanche debris on a Sherpa Glacier, apparently came down wrom side couloirs, but we decided that the descend down Sherpa Glacier would be relatively safe. It was a sunny day and we thought snow must have time to consolidate.
Alarm woke us at 3 am. It was cold at night and initially snow crust was firm enough to hold our weight. We hope that we will have a good snow conditions, but we were wrong. Very soon snow crust start breaking and we had to do slow and tiring postholing.
Ice Cliff
Bypassing North Ridge
We hoped that in the couloir with less sun exposure the snow will became firmer. We were wrong again and found snow powder instead, very good for skiing down, but making miserable knee to tight deep postholing on a way up. On a good side, the bergshrund was almost completely covered with snow.
At the bergshrund
Couloir entrance
The first ice step was about 20 feet 80 degrees WI3. There we were heavilly pounded by spindrift. Second ice step was WI2 about the same hight. Then again postholing all the way to the ridge. It took us 7.5 hours to event reach West Ridge Notch.
1st ice step
After reaching the col we climbed two relatively easy full pitches as in the route description.
After transition to North Face things became more difficult. There was a lot of snow excavation to reach a rock hold or put a pro. I found some insecure slabs and decided to cut this pitch short and exit back to the ridge earlier.
From there we climbed some variation pitch. First there was a corner and a fist crack, then after a short traverse to the right an interesting slab move and a crack. This pitch was quite engaging, not sure about the grade. M4-M5 maybe.
We found a big prominent rock horn, however there was no slings on it. Because the route is relatively popular, we were in doubt if this was the right horn to rappel from, but we had no choice, because this was the only way further. We rappelled about 30 feet, leaving our own red webbing and rappel ring.
After some routefinding we found some ledge that passed under a roof and ended after maybe 1/2 ropelength. We are not sure if this was the right "3rd class" ledge, but from it the terrain up looked logical.
From there we climbed on flakes a pitch of about 5.6 grade and did a short sketchy traverse around a small buttress. The last short pitch was an interesting drytooling problem with tool camming in a crack and high feet on the same crack. We reached the summit ridge about 50 feet eastward from the true summit. It was 6:30 pm. I think we climbed some variation in 7 pitches.
Climbing on North side. No more pictures, because my camera was filled with the snow from spindrift and stopped working.
Descend was straightforward. At one time we descended too low around the False Summit, but quickly corrected ourselves.
On a Sherpa glacier there was firm snow up in the beginning, but then it soften lower down and we had to postholing again. I think we found avalanche debris larger than we've seen the night before, so it is possible that there were fresh avalanches at night or maybe during a day. One must be very careful on Sherpa Glacier in earlier season, I think we took some objective risk there.
We descended to our camp and fell asleep in our tent. It took us 17 hours to climb camp to camp and we were tired. We walked back next day.
Approach:
Used snowshoes.
Gear notes: