Mount Stuart, Ice Cliff Glacier (II-III, AI2)

June 11-13, 2004

The forecast for the weekend did not look promising, with bad weather predicted to move through the Cascades on Sunday. The forecast for Saturday looked OK, however. So Elain and I decided to take a vacation day on Friday, which we hoped would enable us to do an alpine climb over Friday-Saturday. We had originally planned to attempt the North Ridge of Mount Baker, but the day before our departure, the weather forecast took a turn for the worse. Following the old adage that the eastern Cascades is usually a safer bet when bad weather is forecasted, we set out sights on the Stuart Range. But what to do? Ever since our attempt on Mount Stuart in 2003, Elain and I had wanted to return and climb to the summit of Mount Stuart. We had visited Mount Stuart with Aaron Zabriskie back in May, and got a good look at the north side routes, but bad weather precluded a summit attempt. We decided that we would attempt to climb Mount Stuart via the Ice Cliff Glacier route.

We left the Stuart Lake Trailhead at 10:30 AM, and made good time to the intersection with the Colchuck Lake Trail. It was warm and we were hot, hiking in our capilene longjohns. We stupidly left the trail and crossed Mountaineer Creek too early, causing us to spend 45 minutes thrashing around through brush and bog. When we stopped to re-orient ourselves with the terrain, we were immediately swarmed with mosquitoes. We had neglected to bring any bug spray. The mosquitoes swarmed around my head, and even started biting me through my expedition-weight capilene shirt. We got moving quickly, and were soon back on the trail. We made fast time to the correct turn-off for Mount Stuart, and were soon at the west branch of Mountaineer Creek. Elain quickly found a good log on which to cross the creek, although the north side was protected by some devil's club. Once across the creek, we made our way over the ridge and down towards the south branch of Mountaineer Creek. The incessant biting of the mosquitoes hastened us along the faint boot path along the creek. At 3:30 PM we arrived at the talus field at 5400' elevation, below the north side of Mount Stuart and Sherpa Peak. The summit of Mount Stuart was in and out of clouds, but the weather seemed quite stable. While Elain organized things at camp, I hiked up to the moraine at the base of the Ice Cliff Glacier, at 6000'. The ice cliff and the upper couloir both seemed to be in fine shape. However, the ice cliff obscured the view of most of the bergschrund, and the cornice at the top of the couloir looked gigantic. I shrugged and hoped that there would be a breach of the cornice, just outside of view. Once back at camp, we made dinner and set our alarm clock for 3 AM.

When we awoke, I poked my head out of the tent hopefully. The night sky was full of stars, and the air was completely still. It was surprisingly cold, the freezing level had dropped to about the level of our campsite. I had to work hard to chop ice chips out of the frozen surface snow using my ice axe to get snow for making coffee. Sensing the great opportunity, Elain and I hastened to pack up our camp. We carried our sleeping bags, shovel, and tent, and left only our stove, tent poles, and trekking poles behind. By 4:20 we were scrambling up the talus toward the moraine. Dawn started to illuminate the Mountaineer Creek valley as we reached the moraine, so we put away our headlamps and put on our crampons. We tied into the rope, I shouldered the rack, and we started up the route.

The lower 1/3 of the Ice Cliff Glacier route is directly threatened by serac fall from the ice cliff and from accumulated ice on the north ridge of Mount Stuart. There is a gigantic fan of avalanche debris that fills the cirque at the base of the route. Without needing to discuss it, we climbed as quickly as possible up to the base of the ice cliff. At the base of the ice cliff, I started placing running protection using ice screws. We simul-climbed through the ice cliff section, which on the climber's left-hand side is a series of icy ramps interspersed with ledges and short ice steps. At the top of the ice cliff, the route kicks back to a low-angled snow field for a few hundred feet. There, we took a chance to rest and survey the rest of the route above us. The couloir is steep, but looked to be in fine shape. We could see a potential breach in the cornice at the top of the couloir. But before we could get to the couloir, we needed to get past the bergschrund. The schrund on this route is quite impressive, stretching all the way across the route where it terminates in a moat at the steep North Ridge. Fortunately, faint tracks gave away the existence of an improbable-looking bypass on the left hand side. We zigzagged around a couple of crevasses and climbed up an ice ramp to get to a big crevasse. A partial snow bridge rose up to meet the upper wall of the crevasse. The upper wall was overhanging but very short here. It was just a matter of stepping across and making a single burly move to get on top. I placed a screw and sunk my two tools and ungracefully hauled myself up. I belayed Elain up over the ice step, and we contemplated our next move. A traverse on a thin snow fin between crevasses got us onto steep snow slopes above the schrund. Once above the schrund, we turned our attention toward the couloir. The snow was well frozen and excellent for cramponing. There were icy runnels down the center of the couloir that probably would have been excellent styrofoam, but we opted to ascend the couloir by shadowing the rocky wall on the left hand side. Although the snow was not quite as icy on the left hand side, we were less susceptible to icefall on that side, and we could place rock protection to lengthen our pitches of simul-climbing. The sun was warming the upper parts of the east side of the north ridge, and the consequent icefall made the right-hand side of the couloir an unappealing line of ascent. We climbed the 1200' couloir in three long pitches of calf-burning simul-climbing. It was well shaded and cold in the couloir, and I kept looking up longingly at the blue sky and sunlight near the cornice. Near the top of the couloir, I instead found myself cursing the sun, as the final 75' of the couloir was sugary, poorly consolidated snow. I aimed for a breach in the cornice, on the right-hand side, that had not been visible from the base of the route. The last 25' was sugary snow over rock, leading to a stance just below the cornice. I spied a mossy crack and pounded in a pin. I reached up and shafted my tools into the cornice, and ungracefully heaved myself up onto the cornice, ending up on my stomach. The time was 10:30 AM. I enjoyed a brief moment of sunshine before clouds moved in and wind started up, leaving me shivering as I belayed Elain up to me.

On the upper mountain, the weather was starting to deteriorate. We saw charcoal clouds coming in from the southwest. I was worried about visibility and wanted to scout the descent route to the Sherpa-Stuart col before considering tagging the summit. Elain figured we could just follow tracks for the descent if thick clouds rolled in, so we started climbing up towards the summit. The snow on the south side of the mountain was soft and good for step-kicking. At the south ridge of the false summit, we unroped and removed our crampons. I tried to set a GPS waypoint, but discovered that puzzlingly, all of our batteries (including our headlamp batteries) were completely dead. I was a bit concerned to learn that we had less than a liter of water left, but we decided to continue. From the south ridge of the false summit, we scrambled 3rd class ledges and blocks until we reached the crest of the East Ridge. We followed the crest of the ridge up towards the summit, marveling at the tremendous exposure on the north side when the clouds would occasionally permit a peek into the void. We hoped we weren't walking across cornices as we traversed along the ridge crest. Eventually we detoured down a bit and out onto the south side, and then climbed 100' up a snow slope up to reach the blocks just below the summit. The move around the blocks on the north side was intimidating, but once past it, we scrambled easy slabs to reach a block where we found what appeared to be a sawed-off pole mounted in the rock. Through a break in the clouds, we could see the west ridge dropping down on the other side. The time was 1:00 PM. We had our customary summit treat, a cherry Hostess fruit pie. After taking our summit photos, we started back down the route.

We were both very thirsty at this point, and I was very concerned about our water supply. Elain had only about a third of a liter in her water bottle, and we had not seen any meltwater on the climb up to the summit. I had tried to melt snow by putting a water bottle filled with snow inside my parka while descending from the summit, but it only succeeded in making me hot. On the scramble back down the East Ridge, it started to snow lightly. At the south ridge of the false summit, I spied a small meltwater pool. It was filled with lichen and sediment, but it tasted so good. I greedily drank half a liter, then filled our water bottles. At this point we both relaxed, knowing that with water, we would have a lot more energy for the descent. We plunge-stepped back down to the top of the Ice Cliff Glacier couloir, and then continued down until we reached the Sherpa-Stuart col. We saw tracks travel down and around a spire on the ridge, so I went down to investigate them. The tracks led to the edge of the snow, so I walked over there to investigate. Through a part in the clouds, I realized this was not the Sherpa-Stuart col, and I was standing on a cornice hanging over a cliff, so I backed away slowly and retraced my steps. Elain was already kicking steps up the slope towards the Sherpa-Stuart col. At the col, we took a brief rest break.

At 3 PM we started down-climbing the Sherpa Glacier Couloir. A soft 2" layer of sticky snow covered harder well-consolidated snow, which would mean either terrible snow-balling in our crampons, or tricky down-climbing without crampons. After trying our crampons, we opted for the latter approach. We took our time descending the couloir, and after about 90 minutes, we reached the bergschrund. We decided to roped up and belay the bergschrund crossing, and stayed roped up for the descent of the Sherpa Glacier until past the crevasses. At a rest break, I discovered an extra liter bottle of Gatorade in my pack. Elain and I laughed at how we had been stressing about water, and enjoyed the gatorade. Elain's good routefinding got us to an easy snow-filled gully that allowed us to bypass a lot of talus or rock slabs. We reached camp at 6:30 PM.

Just after we arrived in camp, it started to rain. With no batteries for headlamps, we would not be able to make the trail before darkness fell. In addition, the next day was Sunday, so we didn't need to to go to work. We decided to camp for the night and leave at first light. Out of laziness, we just pitched the tent at the same spot. This turned out to be a mistake, because wind-driven rain lashed the tent all night. Our new tent, made out of ultralight "Epic" material, is "water-resistant", meaning not totally waterproof. In the wind-driven rain, it leaked a fair bit of water. Nevertheless, we each got some sleep. When first light came at 4:30, we were both wet and quite ready to get moving. We broke camp in the pouring rain, and started the hike out. In the timber just a few hundred feet below treeline, there was good protection from the wind, a lesson we noted for the future. We made pretty good time on the return trip, and were at the trailhead by 9 AM. We thoroughly enjoyed a greasy breakfast at Kristall's in Leavenworth.

Gear we used: ice tools, crampons, 50m x 8.5mm rope, 3 ice screws, 3 pickets, 2 pins, 3 tri-cams, 2 nuts. (The rock protection was used in the couloir). We carried all of our bivy gear with us up to the summit, in case we needed to bivy.

Things we learned: