Mt. Stuart Direct NW Face

Just becasue the author of the guidebook had the FA doesn't make it a "classic" route. This route has moments of greatness coupled with miles of loose, mossy, rope drag, 4th class simuling that makes it just not really worth doing. I'll come back to Stuart's NW face but it will be covered with snow and ice when I do.



Here I am on the second pitch... the beginning of the crap. We apparently missed the first pitch which is supposed to go at 10+, it felt like solid 11/12 though I mostly did it at C1.



Here's the money pitch. The perfect corner is just that, but very short. We linked three pitches into one with a 60m rope. Your on the perfect corner for less than half of it. Don't go too high. I ended up a solid 30-40 feet above my last piece of pro which was not solid and an additional 10 feet from a solid cam. The crack completely peters out, the climb revs up a notch and it makes you scared and not happy. Managed to wiggle in a marginal RP and down climb back to safety. Most of Kearney's pitches are only 15m long!



James following the second pitch.

We ended up doing the route in 18 hours car to car. Could have moved a tad faster, could have carried less, but a decent time all told. Thankfully we summited so we don't have any compelling reason to come back to this route.