Ingalls Peak - South Ridge, June 2002

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Ingalls Peak - South Ridge, June 2002

Ingalls Peak as seen from below Goat Pass in July of 2005.

Tom had grand plans to climb the West Ridge of Stuart followed by Sherpa's West Ridge. I felt that climbing the West Ridge of Stuart would take us a full day (if not longer) and that a climb of Sherpa in the same day would be next to impossible. As Mount Stuart was my primary objective, I humored Tom by going along with the plan, knowing that the Sherpa climb would never materialize. A quick jaunt to the summit of Ingalls Peak would be a late Saturday afternoon bonus and warm-up for the ambitious itinerary scheduled for the following day.

As has happened countless times before, the weather would deal a crushing blow to our foolishness and in so doing bring our ambitions back down to Earth. In the end, we only managed to bag the summit of Ingalls and occasionally spy the summit of Mt. Stuart from the comfort of our bivy sacks at camp. (Photos: TS, SV)

Click thumbnails below to enlarge...

	A blustery day at Ingalls Pass. The deep blue skies above the cloud-capped Mt. Stuart would soon vanish.
	Ingalls Peak as seen from Ingalls Pass. The ascent route follows the left skyline partially obscured by clouds.
	We slogged to the base of the South Face of Ingalls. The climbing looked easy and short.
	I led the 3 or 4 pitches of ridiculously easy climbing (5.4?) to the summit. As I was preparing to belay Tom up the final pitch, he reported to me that the rope had become impossibly tangled and that he would need a few minutes to sort it all out. A few minutes turned into too long and I was growing increasingly impatient. The wind was howling and the clouds were racing by overhead much like they do in time-lapse photography. Tom was having some issues with his fig8 knot that he'd probably prefer I not elaborate on. Anyway, after what seemed like an eternity we were both standing on top and quickly made the short scramble to the true summit.
	The still frozen Ingalls Lake lay beneath our feet.
	Looking to the northwest from the summit. The high peak on the horizon just right of center is The Cradle (7,467').
	The occasional "sucker-hole" would race on by overhead and offer a brief moment of relative warmth. We rapped back down the face (rap slings and bolts are plentiful) to the base of the route and headed for camp at Ingalls Lake. We awoke early that following morning to near white-out conditions. With the route finding problems the West Ridge of Stuart is notorious for, I didn't want to bother starting the route with only a slim probability that the clouds would lift by afternoon. We slept in for a few hours, packed up and hiked out as the snow began to fall.

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