The North
Face of Chair peak is probably the last place in the backcountry that
you'll have a lonely mountain to yourself on a sunny Saturday. But none
the less, Chris Turchin and I left the upper Alpental Parking lot at about
6:00 am to try and be the first. As usual, no such luck. One party was
just leaving when we pulled up, and one camped in the basin by source
lake! Not detered, we hiked the usual few miles and about 2000 feet up
to the basin under Chair. Begining under the cloud deck is always nice
because if you can't see where you want to be, you don't want to get there
so bad. This was one of those days.
When
we arrived at the Ridge just before the NE Buttress we were 2nd in line
for the face. The winds were very high, but now that we were above the
sea of clouds, it didn't make much difference. We roped up on the maybe
leeward side of the ridge, but it seemed as though the wind was coming
from everywhere! Chris and I set off towards the face with too much crap
(gear) hanging off of us. The snow was very stable which is a must on
this route due to the very steep and avalanche prone slopes that need
to be crossed. Chris descided to lead the 1st pitch, and went up to look
at a varriation to the left of the standard route. I thought it looked
sketchy, and it was! So we climbed up to the nice fixed anchor just to
the right of the first ice pitch. Chris Lead off of the belay and quickly
dispatched the 70-80 degree pitch. He only stopped climbing when the spindrift
hurricanes turned everything to frigid white, and I thought he was hard
core! ha! :)
As I climbed up to Chris I noticed that his only belay was his two
shafts and a nasty old ring angle probably pounded into dirt. However,
I was satisfied by the belay when he told me about the party ahead of
us who made an anchor off of two ice screws placed in the mushy snow.
whoa! So I lead off on a long 50 degree pitch of mixed ice and snow
that gave decent ice screw protection. We ran the 60 meter rope out,
started simu-climbing and climbed until I ran out of slings at a large
tree belay. Chris lead the next pitch that skirts a left facing wall
and was mostly snow with a few short ice sections. This pitch leads
up to the cornice where there are two options. Either walk through the
small moat around to the west side of the mountain, and climb easy slopes
up and right to the summit, OR. For those who want to give the route
a bit a of challenge, from the cornice belay go right on 5.5 ish rock
up to the top of a small ridge. Turn left and climb the last bits to
the summit. Tunnel left under the cornice to the summit! The last bit
looks sketchy, but it's all there! A few pitons are useful for this
way, specifically a thicker bugaboo and a regular lost arrow. The summit
was cold and windy, but the views were awesome. As with many days this
winter, you can see everywhere. Views of Baker, Glacier, Stewart and
Rainier were great. After eating our first food of the day (about 1pm)
we started down for our first set of rappell anchors. Descend from the
summit to the left, and cross the top of a gully to a patch of trees.
Find slings and rapp into a South facing gully. Descend it to the notch
where a HUGE fixed anchor is setup for the rapp into the East facing
gully/chimney (standard route). You only need one rope to rapp this
route because you can easily down climb most or all of the gully.
After a wild ride (glissade) down the basin under the east face, we
put our tools away and headed back down to the trailhead. Still having
a few hours of daylight left we scoped out the good looking waterfalls
down by source lake. A great climb was capped off by a great soak in
Chris's hot tub back home!