[TR] Chair Peak- East Face 10/22/2005

[fenderfour]

Climb: Chair Peak-East Face

 

Date of Climb: 10/22/2005

 

Trip Report:

While all of you sprayers were at the Lovefest, Lylabob, CCMeter, and I ran up Chair peak for a bit of exercise.

 

CCmeter and I working on our map skillz

 

The East Face. Our route was just to the left of the large chimney in the center.

 

The weather was fine, the talus was steep and the climbing was fun and rompy. After 7 months of teaching new climbers, it was great to leg it out and haul some a@$$ on an easy climb.

 

Now a little boring $#!t you already know:

 

The route we took goes straight up the middle of the East face. We tended to stay to the left of the large chimney. Beckey rates the route a 5.5, but it is mostly fourth class. The rock is generally solid, blocky and fun, but the pro placements were scarce.

 

Getting down seems to be the biggest cause of epics on Chair. From the summit, you will find a short, but well-defined trail heading south. It dead-ends at a cliff. Instead of rappelling the cliff, you can down climb the West-ish side on some loose scree and slabby rock until you travers over to the notch at the top of the east gulley. It looks downclimb-able, but there are a number of high, overhanging platforms that would be very difficult to downclimb. Carefully rappel to the lower slabs at the bottom of the gulley.

 

The descent could easily turn into a rockfall deathtrap if there was another party above you. The East gulley has a lot of looseness above it. One redeeming factor is the mutlitude of overhanging platforms in the gulley that you could hide under as rocks came whistling past.

 

I had never climbed Chair Peak before. It was a fun climb on a beautiful day.

 

 

CCmeter demonstrating the use of web-throwers for use in "Extreme Hiking"

 

Gear Notes:

We took a standard alpine rack and one 60m rope. The Leader, Lylabob found about 8 placements in 400' of climbing.

[catbirdseat]

I'd prefer the NE Buttress as a descent route to the East Gully (Standard Route), having done both.

[ScottP]

The NE Butt as a descent route gets my vote over the gully routes as well, but it helps to have been up it before trying to descend it.

That basin in the springtime (with snow in it) is quite a kick. It is a fairly nasty place to be when the avy danger is up, however.

[wolfs]

Just for a point of reference, I tried that route once when there was snow in the basin, but the moat between said snow and the E face route was pretty well insurmountable, and was damned deep (25 feet at least). Perhaps you could have bollarded it and rapped in and then started, but there looked to be no reasonable flat place in the bowels of the moat to have started from. NE buttress was a fun climb anyways as Plan B. Descending it sounds sensible. There's something about the trail leading the other way once you top out that sucks you in. Hell there's a trail off the summit on easy terrain, it must go all the way to the bottom, right?

[Alpine_Tom]

I rapped down the E. gully, and it was so choked with rock that it would have been suicidal to do it without being solo. You couldn't move without knocking down rock. I manged to cut 10' off the end of my rope during the descent.

Rap down the NE buttress.

[fenderfour]

Do you hear that noobs that are looking for info on Chair Peak? Rap off the NEB, leave the E. Gulley alone. It sucks. It will kill you. It will also kill your children if given half a chance. The only reason my partners and I made it out alive is because we are very very lucky. In fact, one rock fell and it stopped mere yards from my pack. It could have easily turned my crackers into crumbs.

[Ben]

It's not clear to me that the NEB is actually easier in all conditions -- it seems like you'd have to do some digging in winter-time to find the anchors. Rapping the gully in winter conditions certainly seemed pretty straightforward by comparison.

 

And in case anyone cares, it's of course also really easy just to walk off (just keep heading south and then circle around the subsidiary peak back towards thumbtack basin). I guess that would be too easy though -- no ropes required...

[Bug]

What a pussy.

You are banned from chestbeating for three days.

Go to your room.

 

Thanks. I was thinking about doing that this weekend.

[catbirdseat]

It's not clear to me that the NEB is actually easier in all conditions -- it seems like you'd have to do some digging in winter-time to find the anchors. Rapping the gully in winter conditions certainly seemed pretty straightforward by comparison.

 

And in case anyone cares, it's of course also really easy just to walk off (just keep heading south and then circle around the subsidiary peak back towards thumbtack basin). I guess that would be too easy though -- no ropes required...

Yes, you are probably right about that. There is a key snag that one needs to rap from that most likely would be buried in a big snow year. It seems that the gully is the way to go in winter.

[DPS]

The gulley only requires a single rap then down climbing in winter.