by Chris Comair
climbs in the USA
I didn't sit down to take the time to write anything after this climb, so this entry is more of a photo dump with a bit of commentary. Stuart's North Ridge definitely earns its spot as a Cascades ultra-classic in my book. Thanks Alan Rousseau for leading this climb, one of the coolest guys in the mountains out there!
2018, sitting on the summit of Forbidden having just climbed the classic West Ridge, Jere and I watched a team make their way up the North Ridge. The route just struck me. The increased solitude, the variety of terrain, and the overall burliness of the ridge just had me impressed. It looked like the true classic. [...]
As we began to make our way up the chute, the climbing stayed drama free. It was exactly what it looked like from below, fun and cruiser. We could see a trio of climbers below us in the distance below looking up at us. Below I knew it, I could feel the sun cresting over the ridge above. A few kicks later, looking over my left shoulder I could see the Wy’east ridge to the summit soaring up above us. “Woahhhhhh, Jess, this is beautiful! When you get up here look over your left shoulder!” [...]
Last year Jessica and I had so many failed attempts at the Devils Kitchen Headwall that we ended up deeming just uttering its name to be unlucky. The fails were not climbing fails, per se... forgetting our boots at home, seriously bad ice fall conditions, etc. By the time we actually managed to give it a shot, it was in condition thin enough that I didn’t deem reasonable to climb half-way through. I bailed off an extremely sketchy screw placement in aerated ice and called it a season for the Headwall. [...]
We followed the traces of our boot pack from 2 days prior, almost completely erased by the constant spindrift. The snow was a ton more stable and far less of a pain in the ass to break trail through. (That wouldn’t last.) We pretty quickly realized that we didn’t do much research about the route, the lower section of which proved to be far longer than expected. [...]
Technical climbing info Mountain: Mount RainierElevation: 14,411ftRoute: Kautz Glacier, descent via Disappointment CleaverLength: 9,000ftGrade: III, AI2-3 Schedule Day 1: Begin at the Paradise Parking Lot, ascend to Camp Hazard via the Wilson Glacier.Day 2: Climb the Kautz Ice Chute and traverse the upper Nisqually Glacier to the summit crater. Descend the Disappointment Cleaver. If we were to do [...]
I had climbed this route back in 2016, and with Jessica just moving here, it was a great opportunity for her to nail a classic and for me to get on the sharp end of the rope. Our normal prep was pretty much tossed to the curb for this climb. We intended to have a rest weekend after hitting our workout routines pretty hard for the past few weeks.[...]
I met Jessica this last summer in the Cordillera Blanca. Our relationship kindled quickly, and a few months later she moved here to Seattle from Montreal. As they would say- the rest was history. I guess we could say that this would be the start of our climbing history. I believe that the definition of [...]
This Andean-esq rhyme clad committing route deserves to be climbed alpine style. We planned to simul-climb the entirety of the 2,000’ face, armed with a rack of screws, pickets, and a couple tiblocks for running protection. We knew that with the long warm days there would be falling ice. We would have to beat the sun before allowing it to bake the upper south west face so an early start and climbing speed would be a big factor.[...]
The North Face has been especially appealing to me. The face is really defined by two significant gullies running almost completely from bottom to top, reminiscent of some sort of double barreled musket. It’s the sort of feature one would should really only climb when conditions are solid, otherwise it would be a game of bullet dodging. [...]
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