Routes: | None so far |
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References: |
Fred Beckey, Cascade Alpine Guide, Vol. 2 , The Mountaineers (Seattle 1987) |
Chair Peak from the East in late April
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Chair Peak rises above Snow Lake just North of Snoqualmie Pass. It is a popular winter climb.
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Chair Peak from the East in late April |
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Party: Paul and Dietrich Belitz
Route: Approach only (to East Shoulder), ctd to Snow Lake
Equipment: AT Skis
Time: Alpental - E Shoulder: 3 hrs 30 mins
E Shoulder - E end of Snow Lake: 1 hr 15 mins
Snow Lake - Alpental: 1 hr 50 mins
Roundtrip from Alpental: 6 hrs 50 mins
Trip report:
This was our annual spring trip to Seattle, to visit Paul at the Engineering
Open House and get some North Cascade skiing in. Like last year, Monique opted
to stay in town, which was just as well, as the snow would have been awful on
foot or snowshoes. Paul and I headed for Snow Lake, which we had seen far below
last year, and to get some vertical feet in we decided to go there via the
East Shoulder of Chair Peak.
The weather forecast was pretty awful, and indeed on Saturday night it was
raining hard in Seattle. On Sunday morning I woke up to a spectacular dawn,
though, and when I picked up Paul at 6:45 we had reasonable hopes for at
least a few hours of sunshine. While driving up to Alpental it was obvious
that 2004/05 had been the driest winter on record for a long time: There was
no snow to speak of anywhere. We started out at 8am following the summer trail
to Source Lake, and almost all the way to the lake there were occasional
bare stretches of trail.
Above Source Lake I switched from sneakers to boots, and as as soon as we left
the trees the snow became pretty awful; deep, wet, and surprisingly unconsolidated.
We fought our way up the boulder fields above Source Lake, routinely sinking in
to our thighs, which made for very slow progress. Above the boulder fields I
headed straight up, hoping for easier going on the steeper terrain, while Paul
decided to skin around to the right. His choice turned out to be the better one;
I encountered snow just as awful as before, only much steeper, whith third-class
moss and five-foot moats in between. I clawed my way up using my ski poles as
dead-man anchors, and finally reached the bowl below Chair Peak, where I also
switched to skinning. Paul was waiting for me on Thumb Rock.
The final chute up to Chair's East Shoulder brought some more wallowing, and
when we finally topped out it had taken us three and a half hours from Alpental,
compared to two hours in the rain the year before! We took a break and admired the
views, and then we started down towards Snow Lake. Paul was mightily attracted by
the slopes straight down, and I had a hard time convincing him that the cliffs
below made it advisable to go much farther east. We still cliffed out and had to
go back up occasionally, but finally got down to the lake at its far eastern end.
About 300' above the lake we met two hikers in light boots who had a hell of a hard
time in the deep, wet snow.
At the lake we fed the grey jays, which sat on our skis and even ate out of Paul's
hand. Then we skinned back up to the saddle the summer trail comes over, and skied
down towards Source Lake, more or less following the summer trail through the cliff
bands. When the terrain opened up a bit we got some nice turns in before we hit the
trail again and ran out of snow. The winter route on the west side of the valley
looked hopeless, so we strapped our skis to our packs and hiked back out.
Last year the weather was lousy but the snow was okay, this year the weather was
great but the snow was lousy, and there was just not enough of it! We should try
to do this on a nice day with good snow sometime!
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| The morning fog burned off ... | ... while we hiked up to Source Lake | Chair Peak from the south | Paul in the chute leading up to the NE Shoulder | Dietrich coming up the chute | The snow was wet and heavy (note the slides!) |
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| On the way down to Snow Lake | Grey jay at Snow Lake | Skinning back up from Snow Lake |
Party: Paul and Dietrich Belitz
Route: Approach only (to East Shoulder)
Equipment: AT Skis
Time: Alpental - E Shoulder: 2 hrs
Trip report:
Monique and I had driven up to Seattle for the weekend, to see what the
Engineers at UW are doing with the ungodly amounts of out-of-state tuition
we are paying them to educate Paul, and to get a shot at the North Cascades
in Spring. Monique did not feel like snow hiking, though, and preferred to
stay in the city.
Paul and I set out from Seattle on Sunday morning at 6am with the idea of skiing
Snoqualmie Mt. When we arrived at Alpental an hour later, we realized that
Snoqualmie was no longer in condition: The SW slopes were mostly devoid of
snow. We also realized that it was raining, as usually seems to be the case
when we arrive at Alpental. We decided to wait a while and see whether the
rain would stop, and then climb towards Chair Pk. Half an hour later it
was clear that the rain would not stop anytime soon, so we got going anyway.
We bootpacked past Source Lake and started climbing the slopes that lead up
to the Snow Lake divide. Light rain alternated with drizzle. I had brought
a shell jacket, but no rain pants (on purpose), and also no gaiters (not
quite on purpose), and my Golite wind pants channeled the water straight
into my boots. We climbed fast in order to stay warm, and soon entered the
whiteout region. Paul knew the route from the time he climbed Chair Pk in
Winter 2003, and led us up a succession of increasingly steeper gullies
until we topped out on the E Ridge of Chair at about 5,500'. I took his word
for where we were at, as visibility was not more than 50'. While we were
contemplating how great the views would be if there were any, it stopped
raining at least, so that was some progress.
We contemplated skiing down to Snow Lake, but were worried about cliffs
we might not be able to see, and went into the saddle between Snow Lake
and Source Lake instead. From there we skied back down to Source Lake.
The skiing was fun, we had dried out a bit, and so we decided to go back
up to the base of the first gully to get some more skiing in. While we were
climbing back up the clouds started to break, and we got glimpses of
Snoqualmie Mt. and The Tooth. So we decided to go back up all the way to the
ridge, in the hope of getting some views after all in exchange for a total
of more than 4,000 vertical feet. Indeed, from the ridge
Snow Lake was visible 1,500' below, and the mountains were drifting in and
out of the clouds. Chair Pk was still thoroughly socked in, but after a
while the clouds lifted there, too, and we saw the NE Buttress and the N Face
only a few hundred feet away. Both look horrible without snow and ice cover,
and probably are: wet, brittle rock with downsloping holds.
This time we skied back down the gullies we had come up, and managed to do
so while taking off our skies only once, to negotiate a rock step at the top
of the uppermost gully. On the avalanche debris above Source Lake I waved
to a lonely guy who was skinning up, when he suddenly pointed at Paul in the
distance and yelled, "is this Paul?". It turned out he had met Paul once at
Crystal and of course recognized his by-now famous homemade orange backpack.
The pack has seen its fair share of abuse by now and will need a replacement
sometime soon, but whatever will replace it will have to be orange again.
After chatting for a while we skied back down to Alpental for the drive
back to Seattle where I dropped off Paul and picked up Monique for the
long drive home to Eugene.
Nice trip despite the rain, but we should have started out later!
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| It was foggy and wet both above ... | ... and below ... | but while climbing up the second time it started clearing | We could see The Tooth ... | ... and Snow Lake ... | ... and eventually even Chair Pk. |
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| Getting back down ... | ... was quite steep in places ... | ... and great fun |