Mount Stuart - Ulrich's Couloir
3/13/21
WA Cascades East Slopes Central
2974
5
Before the transition of seasons, Rob and I windowed a chance to ski Ulrich's Couloir from the summit of Mount Stuart. Requiring a winter approach, it took a 10 mile snowmobile ride up the North Fork Teanaway to get to our 3.5 mile skin over Longs Pass where we set up camp along Ingalls Creek for our alpine start. Waking at 4am from a questionable slumber, we took to climbing the Cascadian Couloir. A trail of little lights, looking at us in pairs, passed us by swiftly only to leave us in wonder: Please, oh, please tell me it was the Teanaway Pack! We continued. The sunrise came along quickly as we bootpacked the couloir at a steady pace only broken by a brief lunch below our push to the False Summit. From there we took the final ridge, drawing out the ice axes to stay our pace towards the summit. We reached the summit at 10:30 am with Rob's alarm going off: we aimed for 10:30 or it was time to turn around: you could say, we were right on time. With grins from faces recalling boyish dreams of sharp mountains enchanted by dark clouds, we would now ski a line often pondered: Ulrich's Couloir. Steep and corn filled, we consistently popped onto the western angle of the coulee where we could ski corn snow back into the gut since the gut itself was a full host of frozen avalanche debris sitting in shadow from the previous wet loose cycles. Naturally, this made the shadowy constrictions exceptionally exciting to ski, testing our edge to edge workman like ski abilities. Threading threw some rocky constrictions at the bottom, we found ourselves in a wonderful low angle field of corn snow as a bonus ski back to camp. A brief rest gave us a moment to recharge the calories before breaking down camp to begin our 3.5 mi, 2000 ft climb back over Longs Pass... to hop on the snowmobile for the 10 mi return trip down the North Fork Teanaway.
Day 1: https://www.strava.com/activities/4942408434
Day 2: https://www.strava.com/activities/4942408194
Day 1: https://www.strava.com/activities/4942408434
Day 2: https://www.strava.com/activities/4942408194
Mount Stuart: Ulrich's Couloir
Wow! Now thats a classic, but modern, TAY Trip Report. Nicely climber and skied, and beautifully presented! Well done!
Thanks! Of course, videos take too long to make haha - I should be better about posting TRs regularly without needing the multimedia experience. But, here we go!
Nice!
Damn - well done! Both the trip and the video. Thanks for the inspiro, guys!
Inspired! Thanks for taking us along.
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