| Mt Stuart - N Side Couloir | ||||||
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February 12-13, 2006 
Phil towed the Hummels and me up the road to the Mountaineer Creek Trailhead with his decidedly un-macho snowmobile. Man, I hate people like me. Snomobiles are satanic machines. We skinned up the trail. It was gorgeous weather. Josh lived up to his reputation and led us through a bit of bushwhacking. We crossed the creek on an interesting log. We continued across the flats. Josh led us through a huge boulder field. Jason fell over and lost his favorite helmet. "Dude, that's my favorite helmet! I've had that helmet since I was 16!" He started skiing back the way we came to find his favorite helmet. Phil, Josh, and I sat on our packs and waited. After a while Phil and I told Josh that he was to wait for his twin, and we would continue. We skinned up to below the Sherpa Glacier. The snow was miserable, hard, and crusty. The Hummels arrived, sans helmet. We skinned up to the moraine. The Ice Cliff was decidedly boney. The snow was decidedly miserable. The Sherpa would have been skiable, but decidedly un-fun. We had a good time BSing that evening. Phil and I pitched his Beta-Light. We staked it down with ice tools, pickets, and ice screws. We used the rope as a chair for dinner. The Hummels' crampons came in handy as stove platforms. Canister stoves in winter are useless. We slept in the next morning. I roused first and cursed at my frozen boots. I strugged out of the tent and showered Phil with frozen condensation. The Hummels finally got up. Phil and I skied a gnar line; 30 vertical feet of 10 degree crust. Jason skinned up 300 feet and came back down. He reported the existance of a couloir on the south facing slopes above camp. Since the sun promised to bake the snow on that side, we skinned up. In the sun it was hot. It got steep, so we took off skis and put on crampons. Jason went up the couloir, exclaiming his pleasure every few seconds. Sounding much like me on a powder day. Josh and Phil were behind me. Jason got to a five foot rockband/choke, and pulled over it fueled by thrashing crampons and raw enthusiasm. I followed, and we continued up the couloir. Josh hesistated, then followed. Jason got to the 50 degree upper section. The snow was soft. I followed. We pulled over onto the rock and scrambled the last twenty feet to the top of the couloir. Jason went up to a local maximum while I waited for Phil and Josh. They stopped at the tree, where the snow quit. The couloir was a bit tight for four skiers, so we spread out as much as possible. Everybody but Jason skied in a conservative manner down to the choke. Josh hucked. Phil thought about hucking; tried butt-sliding; decided on downclimbing. I downclimbed. Jason hucked. We zoomed down the gorgeous chute filled with perfect corn. Even the avy debris was skiable. We got back to camp. The temperature dropped twenty degrees as soon as we hit the shade. We skied out. I became intimately aquainted with a tree, then tried walking across the bridge. This was a bad idea. The snow collapsed; luckily, I did not follow the snow down to the streambed. The Hummels hauled ass down the bullet-proof, rutted road. Phil drove his snowmobile. I snowplowed all the way to the car. Jason's photos are awesome.
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