Had an interesting failed mountain climbing experience this past weekend. Me and this guy I've been climbing with attempted the south face of Mt Stuart, 9415'. The trip ended up being much bigger than I thought as we originally planned for a fairly easy eastern approach (Blue line) but we ended up tackling the south face (black line).

We hiked in Saturday evening and made camp in a valley at the base at about 4100". Got up at 3 and was on the trail at 3:30am to try to get the best snow. Most of the slopes were a sustained 45-55degrees of snow, broken by bands of rock that were closer to 70-80degrees and were fairly technical requiring roping up and leading sections without our packs. Then hauling our packs up on the tail end of our ropes behind us. On the upper portions of the mountain the snow steepened to about 70degrees and we had to start belaying and setting pickets for every pitch. Around 1pm and only at 8300' we decided it was time to turn around and get back to camp seeing the summit slip away from our reach time and skill wise. This meant down climbing on those 70degree snow slopes which at first we did free (sans ropes) but after hitting some really sketchy rock sections we started setting up belay stations and would spend most of the rest of the way down going 25m at a stretch, maybe 50m if we switched leads every time.

Here I should say that we were on some of the scariest terrain that I have ever encountered. This climb was 10 times more difficult on skill, energy, and mentally than Rainier or any other hike or climb I've ever been on. It took us another 9 hours to get back down to our tent, with only 1 minor fall down on the lower slopes where we had switched over to glacier style travel with just the rope between us and no running protection. My partner fell and slid about 30', I tried to hold the fall but it drug me down and I managed to stop the slide partially by arresting with my ice axe and partially by aiming for the gravel scree at the edge of the snow field and using my body dragging in the dirt.

Took us an hour to pack up camp and we headed back to the car around 11:30pm. Climbed the 2000' to the top of the pass and descended another 2500' to the parking lot. Got back to the car right after 3am monday morning, just shy of 24 hours of pretty solid climbing, 19 hours of which were spent on the mountain. Katy was expecting my to call no later than 7pm sunday night and didn't hear from me till around 4am monday. So she had already contacted the state patrol, who was going to send out SAR at first light to try to find us. Finally got home at 7am and said fuck going to work.

Easily the most epic and insane trip I have yet undertaken. Many parts of it were scary, I don't want to repeat that again. Though part of me would love to attempt that route again some day with more time, and maybe a planned bivuac on the mountain somewhere. I learned a hell of a lot on that climb, a lot about my own fears, a bit about my strengths, and a lot about how much my climbing partner can take before he breaks, which was right at our last scramble up to the ridge before dropping down into the valley where the parking lot was.

(picasaweb.google.com)
From Drop Box (picasaweb.google.com)

This picture isn't mine, but shows the mountain pretty good as we did see it. It's probably taken from around 6200' and doesn't really illustrate how big this mountain actually looks from the ridge. The blue line was our original route up, and then after changing our ascent, the route we wanted to take down but never got to. The black line is our way up and the red line is our decent.