The Complete North ridge of Mount Stuart is likely the most famous alpine rock line of washington state. The bold route, named in the 50 classic climbs of North America, stands out on the North side of Mount Stuart, splitting the Ice Cliff and Stuart glaciers with more than 3000’ of granite, which some scientists believe came from Mexico. If only it had come a little closer to one of the main highways.
The complete north ridge in the skyline from the north ridge of sherpa
The complete north ridge is the obvious ridge in the center. Taken from the summit of Colchuck Peak.
While Emily proposed the idea to me a few weeks ago, it was an objective I wanted to do since I learned of it. Since this was my first season of Alpine Rock, we did a few other objectives first, making sure we were ready. The week before, we had done the North Ridge of Sherpa peak, a climb that I’d say had a lower technical difficulty, but due to the lack of beta, was much more adventurous. Emily had Monday through Wednesday off and I was on summer break so we figured we’d hit Stuart over two days, and then climb ingalls on wednesday.
The Car logistics of stuart are super tricky, if coming in from the north it’s easier to get to the climbing, but you then either need to rappel down the ice cliff glacier(bringing snow/ice gear) or go through sherpa Col, which entails a lot of extra walking. You could also go from the south, but that requires a tricky traverse around the west ridge and a long approach. We opted for the rarely done option 3, car shuttling. While definitely time and gas consuming, it made the whole climb much more straightforward. We started at Stuart Lake TH and finished at the Esmeralda TH.
Red: hiking Blue: Climbing
On Sunday evening I drove up to meet Emily at the Esmeralda TH. I put my expired forest pass on the car, and we drove off towards Leavenworth. We arrived at Stuart Lake TH around 8 to sort out gear and get some good sleep. I cowboy camped in the parking lot with a creepy deer while Emily enjoyed the luxuries of her car sleep-setup. At 04:00, our alarms rang and at 04:30 we were off. Since we had done the mountaineers creek approach the week earlier, we knew we could always traverse the talus field, but from other trip reports, we wanted to see if we could find the trail along the creek. It can be found by turning downhill and following the cairns once you reach the entrance to the boulder fields. Once you're along the creek follow the trail and if you ever lose it, just keep walking and you'll find it eventually. It always sticks between the talus and the creek so you won’t ever be far from it.
We eventually started our trek up towards the Stuart basin. We grabbed water in the trees to the left about 100 yards before they ceded to the boulders. From here, the north ridge was obvious and we began our slog up to the moraine. Once on the moraine, it was a quick walk to the toe, where a pitch of class 4 climbing awaited before the last obvious belay ledge. We arrived at the little ledge and gladly unloaded our packs around 09:00, about 4.5 hours after leaving Stuart Lake. Emily took the first pitch, getting the packs stuck while trying to haul them past the squeeze chimney. We also broke a trigger string on a Metolius ULMC #3. Nice training wait I guess. It was nice we had doubles. The second pitch can easily be linked with the first if you have a 60m rope but I guess I should’ve looked at more beta before, since I wasted a few minutes wondering if I was done after the 20m of climbing. It might be hard to haul packs if linking these up though, since it’s a little wandery and there were numerous places for packs to get stuck.
The third pitch is the crux by far. It was Emily’s lead, but she ended up aiding a good bit of it. If this is near your limit, I highly recommend at hauling the leaders pack, I was able to follow on TR with my pack on, but as a novice trad climber, the 5.9+ was definitely pumpy. From there, we switched to simuling and tried to make good progress. We had to pitch out a few little crux sections, still moved fast. Having a micro-trax for each person on this route is super helpful. They’re great for hauling packs, belaying people up rope-draggy sections, and fall-proofing simul cruxes. This first simul block was fun, with lots of optional route options to spice it up. You often aren’t within earsite so radios are highly recommended.
Emily following up a simul block
After 7ish hours of simuling, we reached the slab with the crack pitch. It’s kind of cool I guess but it’s honestly a bit overrated in my opinion. After leading it, we found two bivy ledges 60m below the great gendarme. It felt great to take the packs off and get some food in my stomach. Since my ledge was slanted outward, I tied in and tried to go to bed. It was hard to close my eyes though, since everytime I opened them I’d be looking at the great gendarme and my 5.9 lieback to start the next day. Eventually I got to bed, waking up every hour to readjust and stop myself from rolling off.
A view of the great Gendarme from my bivy
I was awakened the next morning by mosquitoes attacking me. While all I wanted to do was cuddle up in my bag against the cold morning air, I had to swat a skeeters trying to eat me alive. When Emily woke up and said we should get going, I didn’t disagree. She led the slab up the base of the great gendarme, with me having to go on simul for the last 20 meters. At the base, I racked up and tethered my pack, intimidated by the 5.9 lieback. It went much easier than expected though. There were rest sections every couple moves and I never got pumped tryna place gear. At the top, I brought the packs and Emily up, and she started up the offwidth. After french freeing it(thanks to our #4, worth the weight), she brought me up to a good belay alcove.
Emily Following the Lieback
me at an airy belay ledge
To go from there, we had to descend a little bit to traverse over to the notch. I had too much rope-drag and had to stop at the Bivy ledges before the notch. We climbed over a gendarme, having to rappel it to finally get to the last crux, a great 5.8 finger crack. For other parties, take the downward ramp at the Bivy ledges, even if it seems like it goes too far down, it’ll avoid an unnecessary rappel. Emily again french freed it and I led one long simul block to the summit. We topped out 50 feet from the summit, put away the rope, and at 11:00, completed our climb of the north ridge of Mount Stuart. After a few summit photos, we started our descent of the Cascadian. It’s not hard to get over to it, just follow the cairns and don’t go down the obvious couloir you see from the summit. It’s hard to imagine, but that somehow gets worse than the Cascadian.
On the summit
While annoying, the Cascadian descent was pretty straightforward. It was nice to have a trekking pole for the scree skiing but other than that, it’s just a lot of sand in your shoes and cursing at yourself for choosing this sport. Jimmy Chin said in Meru that “the best alpinists are the ones with the worst memories”. While I’m still waiting to do Nooksack tower this weekend to call myself an alpinist, I totally agree with this sentiment. I keep thinking to myself as I write this how the Cascadian wasn’t that bad. Similar to how I already wanna try glacier peak c2c, even after the 18 hour push from camp-summit-car. A bad memory isn’t terrible. As long as it doesn't kill me, It keeps me pushing myself.
Once at Ingalls creek, we decided we didn’t feel like climbing Ingalls peak. While we had the energy and it was totally do-able, it felt anticlimactic. We’d just completed the biggest alpine rock route in the state, and now we were gonna climb this red piece of rock? It was like trying to bag little T after Rainier. We also joked about just hiking out the Ingalls creek trail to US 97 like on sherpa. Luckily we actually had a car this time. My car was a great sight. We reversed the car shuttle to come across Emily's ticketed car( a FS employee who doesn’t have a NW forest pass) and I was back in Seattle around 10:00. By the time all my gear was inside, I was already thinking about when I’d climb it again.
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