How can I even begin to describe my thoughts and feelings about Mount Stuart? Let me start by saying that Mount Stuart is not fucking around. It is a large mountain and a very long climb. The route that I climbed (Cascadian Coulour) is the easiest route up the mountain, but by no means easy. It is a non-technical route meaning that you should be able to climb it without a rope to protect you in case of a fall... if you are a competent climber. I thought I was a pretty good climber when I turned back on this route in June of 2007. On that trip I was climbing solo and turned back at a section of steep snow right below the false summit. A good decision but one that still left me feeling defeated. I knew that the mountain wasn't going anywhere and that I would be back again some day.
My someday came on Saturday August 1st 2009. I was arriving at the trail head late in the morning on a very hot day. Ken and I had been discussing climbing plans earlier in the week when he mentioned Stuart. I think he was still feeling guilty about canceling out on me 2 weeks prior and knew that I really wanted this one. Whatever his motivation I jumped all over this idea.
Our plan was a 2 day climb up the Cascadian Coulour with a bivy at a location to be determined. I was hoping to bivy up high right below the false summit to increase our chances of a successful summit and enough time to descend and get back to the trail head on Sunday. But the late start was making that seem less likely. The logical site to bivy was at Ingalls creek but when we got there it was infested with black flies. We filled up our water at the creek and decided to keep pushing up the route hoping to escape the flies higher up.We pushed on about another hour and found a fairly nice bivy site with slightly less bugs. We were both hot and tired and this seemed like a good stopping place for the night.
The only problem with this bivy site was a lack of running water or even snow to melt to make water. This turned out to be a very big problem. Even though we had filled up at the creek and had even thought to bring an extra water bottle it wasn't enough. We had worked too hard in temperatures in the 90-100 degree range and needed to rehydrate. By the next morning I was down to 1 and a half liters of water and Ken had about 2 liters. We were looking at nearly 4000 feet of elevation to get to the summit, not to mention back down.. We discussed the possibility of hiking back down to the creek to fill up again but neither of us had it in us to hike down and back up.We decided to rest, get an early start and put snow in our bottles to extend our water supply.
We were up at zero dark thirty, ate a little bit of food and were on the route soon after sunrise. The route starts out not too steep or difficult, it just keeps going. When we got higher up and I saw snow I was very happy. Maybe we would be able to pull this off. I filled my hydration bladder with snow and just a little water to help make it slushy. My strategy was to then drink from my nalgene bottle and fill up what I drank with the slush from the bladder thus creating the never ending liter of water.
When we got to the section of steep snow where I had turned back on my previous attempt I was relieved to see that it was almost entirely melted out. So we weren't going to need the second tool I had insisted we bring much less the crampons. An ice ax was handy for the short section of snow that remained but not entirely necessary.
We made our way up to the false summit and could see how much further we still had to go. We were both starting to get pretty tired at this point and decided to drop our packs here to save some energy. This is also where the rock scrambling started to get really fun. There were a couple of interesting moves required to get past a few difficult sections but they were in areas that weren't steep or too dangerous if you slipped. There are several choices of what route to follow here. We elected to follow the lower and what appeared to be less exposed route.
The summit of Mt. Stuart is beautiful. We spent a few moments here taking photos and enjoying the fact that we had made it up. We knew we still had a lot of work to do to get down and out of there however and cut the victory celebration pretty short. Dehydrated and tired we began working our way back down.
The descent is probably the most difficult part of this climb. I was grateful that Ken led the way back down to the false summit as it didn't require me to think too much. We got a little confused descending from the false summit, but only wasted maybe ten minutes. When we made it down this steep section I was pretty relieved. We still had a long way to go but it was no longer as steep and dangerous. However this is when the heat and dehydration began to affect us. I was not thinking too clearly and was concerned that we had started down the wrong coulour and would therefore not be able to retrieve our bivy equipment we had stashed. I still don't know if we were off route and got back on it, or if were on route all along. The descent here is very tedious and tiring and we started to melt down from heat exhaustion about halfway down. I was thankful my snow melting technique kept me from getting too sick.
We eventually made it back to our camp and then on to the joy of running water at Ingalls creek. We rested here and re hydrated a bit before the flies got too annoying to handle and we moved on. The next task was to ascend back up to Longs Pass a 1400ft of elevation gain. This was physically the toughest part of the climb for me. My knee was really hurting and I could barely lift it when I had to step up over rocks and other obstacles. But we just kept slowly moving on and eventually made it up. After Longs Pass we had to walk back down the trail that I swear was ten times longer on the way out then it was on the way in. After 14 hours on the move we were back at the truck and we had achieved our goal of making it out before dark.
To some people this would be a silly and tedious climb. To others it might be an amazing adventure. To me climbs like this are why I climb. I am completely humbled by this mountain and feel very fortunate that I had the opportunity to stand on it's summit if only for a moment.
When I asked Julie if she wanted to go hiking with Piper and I on Sunday she didn't seem too excited about it until I mentiond where I had in mind to go. There is something fun about a cool destination and for me that usually means the summit, but for Julie the magic words were ice caves! This was a very fun family trip. Kind of a long drive from Seattle but worth it for a fun easy hike to a beautiful destination. 
