First light hits the gendarme on the upper North Ridge of Mount Stuart. Our first post-hellish-bivy pitch ascended to the top of a beautiful hand crack (that splits the darker rock spire in the foreground). We criss-crossed up the knife-edged ridge beyond the crack for a couple pitches, and then ran up the upper right edge of the huge pink face to the base of the gendarme. Low on energy we turned away from the 5.9 ascent, hooked into the numerous anchors at the base of the gendarme, and rapelled out of the sunlight into a very wet, loose alternative experience. Taken September, 2001.