"...Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference." Robert Frost obviously never tried to climb mountains in the North Cascades, or he wouldn't have said this. The past three days Ben Mitchell and I have been training for our AMGA alpine guide's exam. Basically we are trying to "guide" each other up long and complex alpine routes. In the North Cascades to get to most of these kind of routes involves a fair amount of off-trail travel just to get out of treeline, then hours of plugging up boulder fields, talus slopes, morianes, snow slopes, glaciers, ect, until the "good" piece of climbing is reached.
An old-fashioned camp out. Notice the hood on to protect from mosquitoes. Ben Mitchell Photo.
Mountain flowers were blooming all over the route. If anyone knows what these are, please tell me!
Trying as hard as we could to get into the north ridge of Mt Stuart up mountaineers creek, we still managed to lose the vaguely marked trail, both on the way up and down. We lost the route on multiple other occasions and in total ended up adding a number of hours to the trip on account of it. There was moderate dehydration, mosquitoes, bushwacking, complaining, laughing, sore feet, tired legs, and empty stomachs. But these were the tough parts of Mt Stuart. The good parts were beautiful endless pitches of granite rock climbing, thousands of feet above the closest flat ground, miles from the nearest other human, sleeping on a tiny ledge and being woken by the sunrise at 4:45 am, frigid glacial meltwater rejuvenating dry mouths, alpine flowers that put the best of gardens to shame, hummingbirds doing fly-bys all day long, and feasting on salmon back in Leavenworth.
Ben on the lower ridge
Where's Waldo (or Ben in this case). Midway up the North Ridge.
There is something quite twisted about this kind of pursuit, and something a little contradictory about training to be a guide as well. We all begin down this path because we love climbing and we either want to get paid to do more of it, or we want to help other people have similarly rewarding experiences as our own. After a year or two of guiding, that original feeling I had (insert inner monologue voice here: "oh my god, they're paying me for this?!") turns into something different, and like all jobs, it starts to feel like a job. That is okay, because I love the job, and don't get me wrong, I am so utterly grateful for the opportunity. But to be a professional mountain guide, you have to treat guiding like work. It is not the same as climbing for myself. So what Ben and I are trying to perfect now, are all the skills and techniques that go into creating a safe a rewarding climbing experience for others.
Me leading the off-width pitch. Ben Mitchell photo.
Mr. Ben Mitchell guiding me up the ridge.
Ben 
Our alpine exam is next month and there are 8 candidates including us. Most of us are now in the Cascades doing similarly arcane alpine routes to get ready for a 10-day stretch of long climbs, high stress, and hopefully success!
For now though my legs are tired and I'm ready for another day of training tomorrow in Snowqualmie Pass where we're doing some route, the name of which I can't remember, and we'll probably do laps up and down, up and down....
Stuart though was amazing. Despite getting a little off on the walk in, we managed a reasonable time of 4 hours to the base of the North Ridge, which is a 3 thousand foot climb that is considered one of classics of the PNW (Pacific NorthWet), and one of the classics of the US. As is often the case with alpine climbs, getting to the top is just half the climb. Getting down from Stuart in any direction involves descent and then more climbing to get out of the basin in which it sits. In this way it is quite a demoralizing climb. Being east of the hydrologic crest of the Cascades, Stuart is a dry mountain. I took 2 liters of water which lasted from 4 am, when we started from the car, until about 10 am the next morning when we found some more water. Thats about 21 hours of moving and what would have been six hours of sleep if the buzzing of mosquitoes hadn't kept me awake all night.
Negotiating some unknown terrain on the descent.
Just before we arrived at our bivy (sleeping) spot, we climbed the most famous and beautiful section of the route, the great gendarme. A gendarme is basically a tower, or turret, that protrudes from a ridge. This one was so beautiful and the climbing so perfect...I wish it weren't so hard to get to!
Ben on the top of pitch one on the gendarme, a 5.9 layback that he styled with his pack on.
Ben following the second, 5.9 offwidth pitch on the gendarme.
Summit! Ben Mitchell photo.