For a variety of reasons, I haven't been able to do much in the way of climbs this year. So, when Heidi and Peter headed off for an end-of-the-summer vacation down to California, it seemed like my destiny to climb something.

I've wanted to climb the West Ridge of Mt. Stuart for a while; it seems to be well within my limits, but interesting climbing. But the people I tried to rope in as partners either couldn't, or were interested in something else. Mike, in particular, had already done (solo) the West Ridge this year, and was more interested in doing the North Ridge. So, with his greatly superior skills and experience (he's done the route several times) I figured, well, why not? I'll be his belay slave and let him drag me up the mountain.

We left town Sunday afternoon, and stopped at Cle Elum (easy through access) for groceries and to the local Mexican Restaurant for dinner. Then, on to the trailhead.

We bunked down in the back of the Windstar, which is quite comfortable, except for the unanticipated problem that you can’t open the back door from the inside. But there’s plenty of room, it’s easy to stand up (crouching) and all in all, it worked quite well. Far better than tossing down the sleeping bag and bivvy sack on the ground.

Mike’s wristwatch alarm went on at 4:00 AM, and we got started, me more slowly than him. I’d brought the propane campstove, so I fired it up to make some hot water for instant coffee, a positive way to start the day.

Then, down the trail by headlamp. We got to Longs Pass by dawn, and got to behold the face of Mt. Stuart.

The approach is long. Long, long, long. It's easy; there's no bushwhacking or fording rivers or anything, it's a nice trail, but it's long. We didn’t get to the actual climbing, on top of the couloir, until 12:30. Long’s Pass is on the south side of the mountain, and then you curve all around the west side of the mountain, past the west ridge and the northwest ridge, up over Goat Pass, across some nasty scree and sand, and then across the Stuart Glacier.

On the descent from Long’s Pass, I brushed against some branches, and the bite valve on my Platypus got knocked off! That was going to doom the climb, I thought, but Mike came up with the idea of jamming a plug into it, and we managed to find a stick that fit pretty securely. I envisioned the stick falling out far up on the route and so I broke off several other similar sticks and put them in my pocket, just in case.

Ingalls Lake, Mt. Rainier in the background.

The Stuart Glacier was the most hazardous part of the climb. You traverse it at about a 30 degree slope, and it was quite icy. We’d brought crampons, of course, identical Stubai aluminum crampons for our trail shoes. Mike had an ice axe, but I didn’t have one; I had assumed that the ice would only be the ascent of the access gully (as it turned out, the access gully was completely bare, and provided some fun warm-up 4th class climbing.)

Mike at the end of the glacier, at the base of the couloir.

Fortunately, I had found a bent-up ski pole in the scree and garbage, which I salvaged and was able to use that to assist myself on the crossing. It was pretty scary, though; it was clear that if I slipped, there was nothing to stop my from sliding down into the crevasses below. At one point early on, one of my crampons slipped off the heel of my shoe, which made for some excitement.

But, I made it. The slope gradually became less steep, and less scary, but at no time was it a regular “walk across the crevasse.” When I got over the moat, I told Mike “If you hear me complaining about scree any more on this climb, I want you to hit me!”

The gully was completely melted out, and so we scrambled up it. It’s not as steep as it looks from a distance, but it’s got several enormous chockstones in it, and the ascent did take some planning.

We actually started the climb around 12:30. Mike led all the pitches, since we didn’t know which ones were the hard ones (he’d done the route more than once, but not in several years.) The climbing starts out pretty easy, mostly 4th and 5.0 climbing, just a couple of pieces of pro for form.

Mike on, I think, the third pitch.

One interesting feature of this climb is the echoes. There are a couple of ridges to the (climbers) left, and a wall to the right, and so you get a whole cascade of echoes with each climbing call you make – “on belay!” “climbing!” etc. Pretty amusing.

As Mike was starting the (I think) third pitch, we heard an odd sound above us, a wooshing sound like a quiet jet plane. And, a sail plane swooped over the mountain and disappeared behind it! It came back again, it was doing big circles, riding the thermals like a hawk, just cool as anything. I wanted to take a picture of it, and pulled my camera out of the bag, one-handed so I could keep my belay hand on the rope (Mike was on a not-very-difficult spot, so I figured it was comparatively safe.) And, dropped the camera. About ten or fifteen feet. I heard it bounce about three times and saw it come to rest below me. Damn, another dead camera!

So, once Mike got to his belay and put in the pro to bring me up, I went down and got the camera. It was Heidi’s compact point-and-shoot, not as nifty as her digital, but far more compact and lighter than the Nikon N80, which I just couldn’t see dragging along on a climb like this. But, I took another picture, and it seemed to work. So I stuck it back into the little camera bag on my chest, and headed up.

Mike on the crack pitch. It's not as difficult as it looks. Quite similar to the W. Ridge of Ingalls, in fact.

One thing that helps with routefinding on this mountain is that it’s all covered with black lichen, and so where the lichen is rubbed off, is probably where the route goes. It’s a great cheater for nervous climbers, a bit like looking for the chalk marks on a sport climb.

The ridge route stops at the gendarme, where you rappel down to the left, and then do two more short pitches to get to easier ground. We got to the gendarme by about 6:30, not very fast time, but acceptable. But after there, things got tricky – there was a bunch of ice in spots on the route, which made routefinding more challenging.

On the final pitch, Mike found a difficult but doable (for him) way up the last obstacle. I followed, cleaning the pro behind him, although I thought I’d seen the correct route to the far left of the bench, rather than the right, where he went. (Later consulting with Beckey proved me correct.) But I couldn’t have taken that without leaving several pieces of pro, and I didn’t want to do that. So I got to the bottom of the difficult move, the final difficult move of the climb, an awkward, off balance move that wasn’t properly protected, since the rope was sagging off to the left. I tried it a couple of times, and just couldn’t do it. It was clear to me that I’d fall; my arms were really tired and I was sketched and anxious about the time, wanting to get to the summit before dark.

We were both pretty anxious and barking at one another, and we finally decided that I’d do a pendulum traverse over to the left, where I’d be below a piece of gear, and then just pull myself up on the rope, if need be. But the piece I pendulumed on popped out, and I nearly pulled Mike off his stance, before I dragged myself up over the lip. My arms were so tired, it was a struggle to grip the rope tightly enough to haul my fat butt up.

So we packed the rope and headed up the last few hundred feet in the fading light, finally turning on our headlamps after 8:30 (those last two pitches took a long time!) and got to the summit about 8:45, to relax and have something to eat before heading down.

And here’s where I discovered that my cell phone didin’t work, and so I had no way to keep Heidi abreast of our progress. When I was up here ten years ago, my analog phone at the time sounded like a land line, with no static at all, and I assumed my fancy new GSM phone would be as good. But no. No service at all (well, I did get a beep telling me I got a message, but couldn’t retrieve it, and couldn’t send a text message despite repeated trying.)

So we ate, and didn’t sign the non-existant register book, and then headed down. Fortunately, Mike had been up here a number of times, most recently a couple of months back after soloing the West Ridge, because I was completely turned around, and would have had us descending the west ridge. I was just dead sure I knew where I was; I thought the Cascadia Couloir, which is the route I’d climbed and where we were going to descend, was on the west side, rather than the south, where it is. I felt like I had to accept his word, and he was right, of course, but I was completely convinced we were heading down the wrong side of the mountain.

So we found the descent route, and a cairn. Then, another cairn. No problem! We kept following them until we lost them, and then found another, which pointed us in an uncertain direction. Okay, well, try this one. Try this way. This looks familiar. What about down here – look, it’s a trail in the sand, you can see the footprints! No, now it’s vanished.

We wandered around for hours, looking for a route down, meandering up and down, easily adding 2000 feet of elevation to what we’d climbed already, and getting used to the idea that we were going to bivvy on the route.

Finally we accepted it. We were both exhausted, running on nothing but adrenalin and the buzz of half-panic, and it was clear that one of us was going to get hurt if we kept this up. It reminded me a bit of Blair Witch, with paths appearing and disappearing, cairns showing up where they made no sense.

So we climbed up again, nearly to the summit, so that when we got started in the morning we could follow the route. We (Mike) found a pretty good bivvy spot, a nice sandy spot about eight feet square, out of the wind, looking to the south at the lights of some town, and up at the spectacular light show above.

I’d almost had an unplanned bivvy several years ago, and afterwards I’d bought a small disposable bivvy sack, more a big Hefty bag than anything else, and have hauled it around for years without ever using it. And, wouldn’t you know, I didn’t have it this time! I had my down coat (thank God!) and gloves, and my ear band, but no emergency bivvy. No polypro long johns either; I thought I’d tossed them in my pack, but it was a blue polypro shirt instead.

So we bundled up with all the clothes we had, and I laid my rope out on the ground to insulate me somewhat. Initially, I wasn’t cold at all, my feet were nice and warm. But my legs had just the one layer of nylon hiking pants (with the zip-off legs) and that wasn’t much.

So I came up with the bright idea of using my pack as a half-sleeping bag. After all, some packs are advertised that way, and it seemed smarter than just letting it go to waste. Of course, with my shoes on, I couldn’t get both feet in the bag, so I took off the shoes and the bag came up about to my knees. Then I draped the polypro shirt over my thighs as a sort of a blanket, and snuggled in. I started shivering almost immediately. Each time I moved around, the shivering stopped, but then when I lay still, it started again. I could tell Mike was sleeping from his breath. He had HIS polypro long johns, but no gloves, and he was fine. I was pretty jealous.

After a while, it became clear that the inside of the pack was wet, just lined with moisture, and my socks were wet, and my feet were getting numb. I didn’t understand how this could be, since my socks had been dry (we’d been dry all day, barely even stepped in mud on the hike in) and there was no water in the pack. But they were wet. I lay there, shivering from the waist down, exhausted, unable to sleep, wanting to look at my watch but afraid to because of the bad news I’d see about how little time had passed. I tucked my hands between my thighs, and that kept them warm, but the shivering kept on unabated.

Finally I gave up. I got out of the pack, put my shoes back on, and started jogging (well, slogging) in place. I’d resisted doing this, because I figured I would quickly break a sweat, but I didn’t. I didn’t get a bit warm, not even my feet. Finally I gave up and lay back down. It was a pretty tiresome experience, just laying there waiting for morning. Not terribly frustrating, just tiresome, laying there in a half-trance, unable to sleep, waiting for the dawn, not even minding the shivering enough to do anything about it.

We finally got up around six, and were ready to head out by 6:20. We fibbled and fobbled around, looking for the route, or for cairns, or for the summit (unaccountably, even that didn’t look right!) and finally located a likely looking route.We had been on part of this route down last night, but missed a zag up over a ridge of rocks. But the route winds and zigs around so meanderingly that there’s no way you’d be able to find it, with as bright a headlamp as you could find – or a spotlight, for that matter! It was completely untenable. Do Not Descend This Mountain in the Dark.

The hike out took a LONG time. This is one climb where the descent might take longer than the climb, it just lasts, and lasts, and lasts, wandering and meandering, getting easier then more obnoxious, winding around and down and back . . .

The last part of the descent off the mountain winds through a nice forested bit, good for a change of scenery. Then you get to the trail that circles the mountain, take a right past a beautiful little stream (where we refilled our water bottles and I washed the caked sweat from my face) then joining up to the Long’s Pass trail.

Last look back at the mountain from Long's Pass.

I had been dreading the slog up to Long’s Pass, but that wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, or remembered. The most discouraging part, for me, wasn’t Long’s Pass, but the endless trudge down to the car. It took about an hour longer than I thought it should, and I was just barely holding it together – sore feet, sore legs, sore shoulders, tired… Mike was tired too, and his feet were so sore that I could actually keep up with him on the descent.

We got to the trailhead about 11:45, to a burst of activity. A group of people were heading out, and another group of about five guys was getting ready to head up to the North Ridge, Willy Nelson playing on the car stereo. We got changed, popped a couple of beers, and got on the way.

I’d been half expecting a search and rescue crew at the parking lot, and was glad that they weren’t there. But on the drive out, half a mile from the trailhead, here came a sherrif’s car. I pulled over to the side of the dirt road and rolled down the window. “You guys are lost!” he told us.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. Turned out he had Heidi’s itinerary, and offered to have his office call her to let her know we were safe. (He had cell service out here, but I still didn’t.) He was a very friendly guy, exactly the sort of person you wish all cops were. I apologized to him for dragging him all the way out here, but he said “I can’t think of a better place to come.”

Cell service burst on us abruptly near the freeway, half an hour later. We made our calls, to wife and work, and drove home, bleary.

Equipment notes You need a 50m rope for the rapell here, unless you climb the gendarme, which is far beyond my skills. You need crampons, and an ice axe, for traversing the Stuart glacier. You need a LONG day if you want to do this climb car-to-car -- I'd want to do it in late June, I think. Then, the couloir would be snow-filled, probably, and it'd go quicker.