Climb: Chair Peak-NE buttress
Date of Climb: 12/22/2004
Trip Report:
Dan and I climbed the NE Buttress Chair Peak last week during perfect weather. We left the Alpental parking lot at around 12:30 on Wednesday and set up camp in the bowl bellow the peak. There was a really good boot track most of the way up which was good because our packs were effin heavy.
Heres the view from our camp.
With the approach out of the way we settled in for the night, All 14 or so hours of it.
Heres a picture of the route at night.
Waking to quite cold temperatures and blue skies at 7, we headed up the to the gulley on the left. It looked steeper and more fun.
heres a pic of me leading the first pitch.
Unfortunately thats the only picture we took on the climb. The batteries in Dan's camera were too cold. Dan followed this pitch with one mountaineering axe and occasional help from ascenders (he was too cheap to buy or rent tools). This pitch is over 60 meters to a good tree belay right now.
We simulclimbed snow and some easy mxed terrain to a rock belay below the waterfall which was really fun. I placed one crap screw in aerated ice at the bottom and one clipped with a screamer just below the crux. Dan followed on ascenders off of my harness (sucky). The next pitches we swung leads through styraphoamy snow and barely covered rock in places. could't really find any good pro though so we might as well have simulclimbed to the col where we unroped ate, drank and scrambled to the top.
Heres a pic of the summit scramble. (it's not as steep as it looks, really)
The descent was eventful. First we had to deal with a stuck rope. Then we realized that the rap stations were about 35 meters apart. I bootied a biner near the top of a steep chute and promptly left it clipped to a pin I fixed 30 meters down. Do not trust this pin it is not a good placement! But it did get us to the next rap station. The descent gully had some steep ice and may have made a good ascent route.
This picture is at the top of the aforementioned gulley.
We broke camp and hiked out under an almost full moon.
Back at the car by 7pm. A great trip and a fun climb.
Gear Notes:
2 tools, 4 short screws, 4 pins, stoppers, and 6 cams
should have brought 4 tools and pickets or flukes.
Approach Notes:
boot track, hard consolidated, bare
