Mt. Stuart had been at the top of Eileen’s alpine “bucket list” for several years—pretty much from the first time she saw the granitic monolith. She was stoked to give it a try last weekend, even when faced with a deteriorating weather forecast. From my own perspective, Mt. Stuart has served me up more mountain memories than any other peak: Solid rock and fun route-finding on the West Ridge…thrilling exposure on the Ice Cliff Glacier…frustrating bergschrunds on the Sherpa Glacier…a scary lightning storm on the summit…a desperate headlamp descent of Ulrich’s Couloir during a downpour…summer and winter camps in Mountaineer Creek Basin…. But somehow, a full 20 years had slipped by since I last planted a boot on the mountain. I was pretty excited about a reunion.

Day 1: Trailhead to Ingalls Creek

We started out from the Teanaway road-end on Friday evening and hiked up to Long’s Pass, traveling mostly on firm snow. There, we took a few minutes to scope out Mt Stuart’s south face and identify Ulrich’s Couloir. It wasn’t clear which was the correct gully, but based on Beckey’s description, we fingered the one that looked to be snow- filled the whole way. An hour later found us setting up camp (2.5 hours from TH) on a rocky bench 150 feet above Ingalls Creek.

: Mt Stuart and Eileen At Longs Pass

Day 2: Mt. Stuart Summit Climb

We awoke Saturday morning to strong winds and heavy clouds to the west. After hiking down to raging Ingalls Creek and crossing on a slanted log, we headed straight uphill through mostly open forest.

: Crossing Ingalls Creek

About 1500 feet above the creek, we entered an appealing snow gully and kept going straight ahead for another 1000 feet.

Lower Snow Couloir

Eileen Climbing Snow Couloir

Things got confusing when the snow ended at a rock headwall. We killed 1.5 hours checking out hard-left and soft-left options. Our third option was a sandy gully that went up and slightly right. Surprisingly, this one got us easily to a 7700-foot saddle at the base of the Cascadian Basin. We hadn’t planned to switch routes, but at least we knew where to go now!

: Eileen In Cascadian Basin

At the basin head, we marveled at the astonishing view of Sherpa Peak, with its legendary balanced rock.

: Sherpa Peak From Cascadian Saddle

We then turned left and climbed moderately steep snowfields, walked up a snow arete, and scrambled granite boulder to reach the false summit. A narrow, scalloped crest swept up to the true summit, which showed itself only intermittently through swirling clouds.

Eileen Below False Summit

Eileen On Snow Arete

: Summit From False Summit

After three decades, I had forgotten what an incredible sight this summit ridge is! We trudged for an hour through sometimes-hip-deep snow to reach the summit rocks (8.4 hours from camp). During our 45-minute stay, wild views came and went quickly as the clouds continued soaring and swirling over and below.

: Eileen and Jim On Summit

Shortly after 4:00pm, we started our descent. What had seemed awfully long on the way up proved to be quite fast on the way down, thanks to good glissading conditions on the false-summit snowfield and perfect plunge-stepping conditions in the lower snow couloir.

: Glissading False Summit Snowfield

We followed snow patches and meadowland down toward Ingalls Creek until slide alder pushed us into forest on the left. A quick plunge brought us to our log crossing, which was much trickier due to the uphill slant (not recommended with nylon shell pants!). Minutes later, we were back in camp (3.4 hours from summit) and treated with alpenglow on the mountain.

: Camp Below Mt Stuart

Day 3: Ingalls Creek to Trailhead

We awoke to low clouds and limited visibility. In light fog, we groped our way back up to Long’s Pass, then down to the trailhead (2.6 hours from camp).

Route Comments

Fred Beckey says that a principal difficulty of Ulrich’s Couloir is being able to select the correct couloir. No kidding! His statement that Ulrich’s “is the first major couloir west [left] of Cascadian Couloir” will certainly compound the problem, because his photos and sketch show it as the second couloir. I’m still not sure which is correct. Nonetheless, we can heartily recommend our “Ulcadian Couloir” route up the first gully, with a high crossover to the Cascadian Basin. An advantage of our route versus Cascadian Couloir is that it offers better snowcover in the lower reaches. An advantage versus Ulrich’s Couloir is that it takes a superbly scenic traverse over the false summit and along the summit ridge—certainly the best part of the whole climb. Through dumb luck, we felt like we had stumbled into the primo south-side route!