[TR] Chair Peak - East face 10/19/2008

[mountainmatt]

Trip: Chair Peak - East face

 

Date: 10/19/2008

 

Trip Report:

Destination, Martha, and I headed up to get on what will likely be one of our last alpine routes of the season. Since I had recently injured my hand at Index, we decided to go for the easy route on the east face of Chair Peak. From what I could find from previous trip reports and on websites like summitpost, the route looked fairly easy and I thought it would be a looser version of the Tooth; a perfect fun easy day out.

 

We hiked up to the ridge just above Snow Lake, and then took the lower ridge over to the set of trees just below the peak. This was a mistake. We ended up having to bush whack our way up a drainage to the base of the talus field. When looking down from above, it appears that you can get to a talus field earlier and bypass a lot of the bush whacking. Oh well. Once at the talus field, we cruised up a mix of snow and rock to get to the base of the route near the large chimney in the center of the face. The sun was out, but the wind made things pretty cold. I was shaking pretty nicely by the time we started climbing.

 

To simplify things, I led all the pitches and then brought Martha and Destination up at the same time on double 8.5mm. While the route is not particularly hard, I would mention that there was very little gear to be placed on the route, and the gear that could be placed was not bomber. This also complicated the belay situation a great deal, causing us to have to simul-climb at one point with little gear between us. There is definitely more loose rock on the route than on the Tooth, but it was not as loose as (for example) the Improbable Traverse on Guye peak. I kept thinking that maybe I was off route, constantly looking to the left and to the right to see if there were any cracks or just something for some gear. But I never found them. When I finally led below the roof, I finally found a fixed pin, suggesting that we were on route the whole time (this was confirmed when I compared our route to the picture shown on summitpost and in the Beckey guide). After pulling through the roof section, we came to the summit ridge and traversed over to find our friend Doug had just finished the NE buttress route with his friend Andrew. This was perfect, as they could show us the way down the NE buttress without having to use the loose south route descent. After four double rope rappels, we hit the ridge that took us near snow lake and the main trail. After that, we cruised back to the car for some Pringles and Gatorade. (Thanks Martha for being the photographer )

 

 

Snoqualime pass area:

 

 

Chair from the ridge near Snow Lake:

 

 

Destination loving the snow field:

 

 

Route taken. The rappel stations are shown coming down the NE buttress:

 

 

Route from Summitpost (similar to the suggested route in the Beckey guides as well):

 

 

Me at near the base of the route:

 

 

Me belaying at the top of pitch 3:

 

 

 

Destination near the summit:

 

 

Me on the ledge near the last rappel, enjoying the view:

 

 

Heading down the last rappel:

 

 

Ice is starting to form on the NE and N sides

 

 

 

 

Gear Notes:

Double ropes are nice, small gear, stoppers, runners, and sense of adventure.

 

Approach Notes:

Hike the snow lake trail head to the ridge just before the lake, take the talus field early to get to the base. Descend the NE buttress route, walk the ridge down to the flat area just east of Snow lake, hike the nice trail out.

[jared_j]

I did this with a friend two summers ago. I recall sketchy rock and little pro. Very scenic and moderate climbing, however.

[justinp]

Yeh evil monkey

 

Easy on that snowfiled