Mt Stuart...4th of July 2009

This past 4th of July weekend had superb weather and was filled with all sorts of good times. We intended on running the PCT from Stevens pass to Snoqualmie pass...Glenn sent me this note on Thursday...

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Talked to the snoqualmie ranger station. still snow in some avalanche shoots. They went up to kendal catwalk and didn't go beyond because they didn't have their ice axes. the skykomish ranger said snow above 4k and there will be intermiten snow the whole way. If we do this we would need to bring ice axes and maybe katoolals and maybe my 6mm line that RVg has. Last weekend I met a guy up on stevens who had hiked down from canada and was continuing on south so there will have been at least one who has tried it.
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We opted out and chose to head East to Mt. Stuart on Friday and see if we could get up the mountain. Tell of the trail was 10 hours round trip from the car with 1.5 hours on the top. We traveled with crampons, Ice Axe, 30 meters of 6mm rope, helmets and the 10 essentials (lightweight version).

2009 July - Mt Stuart

Good times, Saturday I did a recover ride as my legs were hammered and Sunday JVG, Aaron and I rode Tiger and added on some bonus climbs as well as a new trail that punished me. My front brake went out while dropping into a very steep descent. I slid of the trail into the forest where I hit a downed tree and taco'ed my front wheel. After 20 minutes of Aaron and I jumping on my wheel to make it rideable we hiked back to the road and descended to the parking lot, with a mere flesh wound :-) We also paddled around Lake Samamish to round out the weekend and enjoy the sun. AWESOME weekend.