[TR] Chair Peak - NE Buttress 1/14/2013

[johnnygraec]

Trip: Chair Peak - NE Buttress

 

Date: 1/14/2013

 

Trip Report:

 

Jason (Yikes) and I headed out to see what chair peak looked like. We left the park-n-ride on Mercer Island around 6:45 and were hiking towards source lake an hour later. Definitely some ice in, source lake line, as well as something high up on the other side of the valley - chockstone falls... (fat on the bottom maybe a bit thin on the top but hard to tell) We encountered a soloist on the uphill above source lake who was also headed to chair peak. We hit the thumbtack a couple hours later and into thickening clouds with the soloists poles hazily visible in the distance. Visibility was maybe 150-200 yards so not too bad. We took a break and waited to see if it might clear a bit. We decided to head up to the ridge and take a look. Here is where the wind created some "bitter" cold conditions.

 

 

[img:center]http://www.johngrace.com/chair/5494small.jpg[/img]

looks about how it felt

 

At the top of the ridge we had a discussion about whether to try the NE Buttress or N Face. We settled on NE Buttress because why not and Jason led up the first pitch. A bit later I followed encountering mostly thick-ish brittle ice crust with soft snow beneath. Jason placed an excellent tri-cam, two girth hitches and a piton.

 

[img:center]http://www.johngrace.com/chair/5483small.jpg[/img]

looking up the first pitch

 

At the top of the first pitch Jason graciously passed over some hand warmers as mine were getting numb, and my feet were headed in that direction. (new boots?... I was wearing Sportiva Trango Ice Evos (older version of the newer Primes) but all in all I'd say they were plenty of boot for what we were doing) I took the 2 pickets from him, some ice screws, and headed up. I slung a small tree about 15 yards out and came to a stop. The crust which had been supporting my weight thinned to the point of breaking off in slabs revealing sugar snow all the way down to rock. I tried forward progress on both sides of the tree but kept slipping back down. I was increasingly concerned I would slid down with a larger chunk of crust and due to my inability to get a leg up I decided to call it quits and down climbed.

 

[img:center]http://www.johngrace.com/chair/5490small.jpg[/img]

uninspired image making from the top of p.1 - you can see the small tree I made it to before turning around

 

We rapped off. Back at thumb tack we could still see the soloist's poles and were a bit concerned as he had a jump start on us but as we started down we saw him in the distance. He had success on the N Face and mentioned encountering some similar snow conditions as us. Perhaps I could have continued trying to power thru the snow but I felt uncomfortable with it as this is my first season climbing in these types of conditions. Cheers to Jason for leading the first pitch and being game for Chair on a Monday.

 

Gear Notes:

tri-cam 1.0, piton, hand-warmers

 

Approach Notes:

Carried snow shoes but didn't put 'em on.

[yikes]

Ya, good times despite getting shut down. Sorry, I picked the only overcast day in a week of high pressure.

[johnnygraec]

 

HA, well at least conditions don't look that good today...j/k

 

[img:left]http://www.johngrace.com/chair/Alpcam.jpg[/img]

 

[unklehuck]

Yo John - I clicked the link to your site and my anti-virus spit this out:

 

"object is infected by HEUR:Trojan.Script.Generic"

 

Might want to look into it!

[dave schultz]

Goran and I headed up to Chair Peak on Sunday to climb the NE Buttress. We started the climb around 11am-ish and only did the first pitch. It took me a little while to lead it, and there was a party that appears to be going fairly slow on the upper pitch before the waterfall and decided it wasn't worth the 3.5 pitches of snow for the .5 pitches of ice. We bailed with two rappels and lead a little bit of cord to back up the first rappel. I'm sure we would have had similar snow on Sunday and am glad we didn't head up into it. Fun to get out and get after it though.