13 minute read
The Trajectory of a Dream:
Rediscovering Mt. Stuart
Story by Brian Povolny
Ihad a dream that lasted 24 years, one that drifted in my subconscious like a satellite in orbit revolving patiently, waiting to be activated. Only now can I see how round and symmetrical the dream was, how it would inevitably return to its origin.
I was nineteen when I first saw it. After four days of driving westward to my new home in Seattle, I stopped at Indian John Hill Rest Area on I-90 to infuse my hemorrhaging Corvair with oil. Excitement had been building for several hours as I approached the Cascade Mountains. Born in Ohio, I had only skied on teeny midwestern hills. The idea of skiing on a ‘real’ mountain thrilled me, and I could scarcely imagine what it would be like to live just an hour’s drive from one. As I slammed the hood of my leaking car shut, I noticed a high rocky peak in the distance, overshadowing its neighbors, clearly visible over the intervening hills.
A snowfield floated improbably near the apex of the jagged summit. I was immediately drawn to this peak and asked an elderly gentleman in a Winnebago parked next to me, who seemed also to be looking at the mountain, what its name was. I have no idea why I thought this fellow would know. But he did.
“That’s Mt. Stuart, son,” he replied and went on to provide detailed statistics about the peak: its elevation, granitic nature, its rank as the second highest nonvolcanic peak in the state, and, finally, its defining position in the Stuart Range.
Everything he said heightened the allure of the distant mountain. After he drove away, I sat on a picnic table and daydreamed of an excursion to the evocative peak. How to approach or ascend it was not part of my thoughts. Certainly, I was not a climber and would not have known what to do with a rope or an ice axe. Nor would I have known what backcountry skiing was since determined outdoor people had not yet rediscovered it. There would have been no way for me to imagine skiing along the highest ridge of this peak, or jumping onto the exposed snowfield that shimmered so marvelously that summer evening in 1971. Yet now, having done these things, I think my amorphous fantasy was to simply ski from the summit of Mt. Stuart.
Mt. Stuart’s reputation places it in a select group of striking peaks, impressive with great relief and complex walls of granite, ice, and snow. You won’t often find skiers on the mountain, but climbers covet dozens of its high-quality routes. Most aspiring Washington climbers eventually attempt this peak by one route or another. The south side has numerous rock and snow routes, which appeal to peak baggers because they’re not too difficult. Likewise, serious alpinists have long considered the mountain’s north side, especially the North Ridge, a rite of passage. Mt. Stuart has something for everyone. Mountaineering legend Fred Becky called it the “crown peak of the north central Cascades.” Professor W.D. Lyman described it as a “dizzy horn of rock set in a field of snow.”
Without any intention on my part, Mt. Stuart became my first mountain crush, teaching me all the inaugural lessons of mountaineering. In 1973, while wandering around the old REI store on 11th Ave in Seattle, I saw an ad for a climbing course and signed up. It turned out Mt. Stuart would be the class’s location. There were just two students. We learned rudimentary mountaineering skills and lived in a snow cave on the Sherpa Glacier for a week. We climbed to the summit on the final day, and I was hopelessly hooked. Back home afterward, my pulse would quicken when I imagined the contours of upper Mountaineer Creek on Stuart’s north side or the fantastic granite needles that stood on its subsidiary ridges, or the pocket glaciers cascading off its immense north face. Within a couple of years, I achieved many climbing milestones on Mt. Stuart: first major alpine rock climb, first technical ice, first planned bivouac, first unplanned bivouac. In those first years, it seemed that Mt. Stuart would encompass all the climbing I’d ever want to do. I would never desire another mountain and be forever content to scale its ridges, faces, and ice falls.
Yet, driving west on I-90 in March of 1995, I gazed again at a very snowy Mt. Stuart and realized that 12 years had passed since I was last on the mountain. How could it have been so long? Perhaps the changes that come with passing years, unimaginable to my younger self, had preempted the youthful passion. More likely, though, was the fact that I was less interested in alpine climbing since my main object in traveling to large mountains had now become a need to ski down them.
I focused on the peak with a different eye this time. From where I stood, the entire upper mountain was snowy. I instinctively imagined a descent route, visualizing a path from the summit to the false summit and then down Cascadian Couloir. You could ski Mt. Stuart! Why had I never considered it before?
One of the rewards of mountain travel is developing an intimate knowledge of a great natural eminence. As a climber, you study the micro and the macro: the handhold in front of your nose, the weather generated by the peak thrust into the atmosphere. A climber moves slowly, the better to contemplate secret little places, but must rely on mental pictures for an overall view. Now imagine being a bird, perhaps a hawk. You can fly around the mountain in minutes, see everything in real time, land anywhere you like. Get a lay of the land by charting your flight path right over it. That’s skiing. You climb the peak, then swoop down, surrendering freely to the pull of gravity, feeding off the energy inherent in the mountain; your descent completes the knowledge gained on the ascent. Hiking down a mountain in boots is a sentence, carried out one trudging step at a time, but descending the same mountain on skis is a revelation.
The thought of skiing my beloved Mt. Stuart made me giddy.
It is 4 a.m. The sleeping city is empty of activity, like a forest before a storm; birds and insects mute. I think about the multitudes sleeping right now and realize that very few would join this attempt to ski Mt. Stuart in a day. My companion Frith took my suggestion no more seriously than an invitation to go for a jog in the park. No problem, of course, she’ll go. As we leave the dark city, I try to picture the progression of our upcoming climb, but I can’t because there are too many unknowns. Where will the snow level be? Can we ski from Longs Pass to Ingalls Creek? Will conditions allow for a fast ascent? Will the snowpack and the weather remain stable? I wonder where we’ll be as darkness once again falls over the city.
We exit the car at 6 a.m. The roar of a stream, which forms a small cataract next to the parking lot, fills the air with white noise. As we start hiking, we are curiously alone, each in the solitude imposed by the waterfall like a couple wearing earbuds who automatically go about independent yet complementary tasks. The smell of fir trees and cool morning air is bracing. In minutes, we reach snow and put on skis. Soon, we are gliding upward over frozen snow. Progress is good; we leave the forest in less than an hour and approach Longs Pass. As we crest the pass, one last step takes us from frozen pre-dawn into the warmth of morning sun. I look across the Ingalls Creek Valley to the awesome panorama of Mt. Stuart. My God, it seems so huge!
Two and a half months have passed since I viewed the snowy mountain from I-90 and resolved to ski it. Today, the ridge connecting the false summit to the summit is all rock. We’ll have to leave the skis at the top of Cascadian Couloir, scramble to the top, and abandon the plan to ski from the summit. I feel robbed like someone just ruined a good novel by telling me the ending. In desperation, I scrutinize the mountain for alternatives. To my surprise, one jumps out immediately: Ulrich’s Couloir.
A revelation! Forget about Cascadian. The only way to really ski Stuart is Ulrich’s. I see now that it’s the only continuous snow route to the true summit. That shimmering snow field I first saw in 1971 is actually the upper slope of Ulrich’s Couloir.
Describing Ulrich’s, Beckey writes, “This prominent couloir, about 4000 feet high, bites into the south slopes of Stuart, and higher curves westerly to reach the summit in an uninterrupted sweep.” Ulrich’s is steep in places as it snakes its way upward through granite canyons. Later in the season, it presents difficulties like cliffs, rockfalls, and waterfalls, but now it’s all snow.
The actual climbing route ascends a slope immediately to the east of the main couloir for about 1500 feet, then traverses into Ulrich’s, thus avoiding the largest cliff in the lower reaches of the true couloir. The whole damn thing appears to be skiable—a terribly exciting prospect!
We strip skins off our skis and jump the little cornice at Long’s pass to ski down into the Ingalls Creek Valley, which drains the immense, deeply furrowed south slide of Mt. Stuart. Wide GS turns down the bowl below the pass bring us to woods where we encounter a party who had climbed Stuart a day earlier. They quiz us about our experience. Do we know how to climb? Do we have the proper equipment?
“We’re skiing,” I tell them to calm their fears that we might try to climb the mountain without adequate preparation. As we continue past them, I experience the unholy sense of superiority that skiers secretly feel when they pass hikers.
Soon, the snow gets patchy. We pull off the skis and strap them to our packs, cross Ingalls Creek on logs, and moments later we’re kicking steps up Stuart itself. The snow is softening, and I fear that progress may be slow. Luckily, someone had kicked steps two or three days ago. Just before crossing into the couloir proper, we climb a section without steps and find ourselves struggling in knee-deep snow, post-holing with each step. Frith leads this section and soon we traverse into Ulrich’s Couloir.
The couloir steepens, eases, and steepens again as it twists up Stuart’s deeply eroded face—towering granite walls on our right form a little summit at each turn. I am amazed at the number of good rock-climbing routes on these walls but remain confident that no one has climbed them because they each end on just one of an endless series of pinnacles.
There is no breeze deep within these walls, and it is getting hot. Even though we’ve stripped down to minimal clothing, we’re still drenched in sweat. Places where snow has recently funneled down the gully, are hollowed out like half pipes. The old tracks disappear, and we make new ones, testing first to the right and then left for the best snow. We carry ice axes, but ski poles prove to be the best climbing aids.
After a couple of hours of climbing, we rest. Looking up, I see the couloir turn to the left and broaden. Could this be the summit snowfield I’ve been looking at all these years? We hear faint voices from somewhere up on the ridge connecting the false summit to the true summit, so we must be close. Energized, we strike out again. The final face curves upward in a parabolic gradient that demands front pointing with our stiff ski boots to crest the final section. Then, a few steps up a gentle ridge lead to the summit. It’s a beautiful day, with the air still. A few cumulus clouds drift over the surrounding peaks. We relax for a few minutes on the summit rock, snapping pictures and gloating over our successful climb.
I make a point of putting my skis on for the descent at the highest possible point of snow, a childish gesture that makes sense only to me. I will go first, and Frith will follow on foot once I have stopped below the upper face at a safe point where she can put on her skis.
The gentle summit ridge yields a few fast turns. Now it’s time to jump into the summit bowl. The snow is getting saturated with water, so I decide to ski-cut the entire face on my first traverse. Heart pounding, I leap over the edge and traverse across the summit snow field, jumping up and down on my skis to loosen anything ready to go. The surface snow sloughs as I traverse, but just the top three or four inches cut loose and slide. I do a jump turn and ski back onto the slowly moving molasses, pass through it, and stop on the far side of the slope. I take in the scene: a strange mixture of the mythic and the mundane. The entire snow field is sloughing before my eyes, a common enough sight in spring conditions. But this is Stuart’s summit, visible for a hundred miles! Professor Lyman’s field of snow is shedding its skin right off the dizzy horn of rock! Someone at the Indian John Hill rest stop could be watching this happen right now.
Is this a fantasy from which I’ll awaken? No, this is real, and for the next hour, Mt. Stuart belongs to me, dream lover of two decades.
The ski descent never threatens, but continually challenges. Jump turns put me at ease in the steepest sections, and the glopalanches move at a sluggish pace. The snow surface revealed by the sloughs is actually good corn snow, where ski edges easily bite. Frith dons her skis below the steep upper section, and we create a pas de deux on the lovely white stage, figure8-ing one another’s tracks and yelping with joy. It’s obvious that we’ll have no problem getting back before dark.
The skiing is simply fabulous. I’ve never skied anything like this 4000 feet of steep, twisting granite canyon. I wouldn’t even know where to look for a comparison. Maybe the old guy at the rest stop, who seemed to know so much about Mt. Stuart, could point out another equally enchanting peak somewhere. Or maybe for him, there was just one real mountain love, and that was Stuart. Perhaps he had climbed the mountain years earlier and was remembering something special about that adventure when a kid in a Corvair interrupted his reverie to ask if he knew the mountain’s name.
