This picture was taken 18 April 1971 from Eightmile Mountain; the snow helps emphasize features important for planning a climb. High-angle rock sheds snow, while lower angles (and likely easier climbing) retain snow. In this case, the access to the crest of the ridge begins at some snow patches to the right of the ridge and continues out of sight up a narrow gully.

However, some areas with snow can be quite dangerous. The narrow glacier to the left of the ridge is the Ice Cliff Glacier; Mark Weigelt (one of my instructors in the climbing courses) was killed in the snow-filled gully above the glacier in October 1972.

Mount Stuart is part of the largest granite monadnock in the contiguous 48 states. The North Ridge route is one of the Fifty Classic Climbs of North America and is also described in Selected Climbs in the Cascades v1. The route was first climbed in September 1956. We took the original route from Ingalls Lake, over a small pass and across the Stuart Glacier to access the ridge about halfway up (red line). The ridge was climbed from its base in 1963, but most climbers still access the ridge via the original route.