Ingalls Peak 7662ft (attempt)

North Peak, East Ridge (5.7)

September 11, 2005

Todd and I had plans to spend two days climbing the north ridge of Mt Stuart but the weather thwarted our plans. Low clouds were spitting rain as we left the Esmerelda Basin trail head at 8:20am Sunday morning. The weather forecast was predicting partly cloudy weather today, improving on Monday. What we encountered was rain, graupel, and snow with about 30 minutes of sunshine in between.

We made good time hiking to the meadow below Ingalls Lake, arriving around 10am. Here we found several campers just finishing up breakfast. It appeared that they had endured a cold night. Clouds were still covering Mt Stuart, but we could see snow dustings on the lower flanks of Ingalls Peak. We decided to continue hiking up to Ingalls Lake with hopes of the weather improving to where we could climb.