This weekend I attempted to climb the Northeast Buttress of Chair Peak with Preston. The peak is located in Snoqualmie Pass and is generally considered an approachable winter alpine route, although as with all winter alpine routes, the difficulty is highly conditions dependent. While it had been warm recently, we hoped with the current temperature just below freezing the route would still have enough ice to climb. Combined with clear skies and low avalanche danger, it seemed at least worth an attempt.
We drove from Bellingham to Redmond on Friday night and slept at Preston's friend's house. We tried to get as much sleep as we could before our wakeup time of 3:30am. In the morning we made a quick breakfast and hit the road as soon as we could. After an hour of driving we pulled into the Alpental parking lot at around 5am.
Although many people approach directly up the river that leads to Source Lake, we chose to take the Snow Lake trail due to concerns about river crossings and since I had taken this trail plenty of times before, we figured we would save time by avoiding any route finding. We hiked in the dark for about an hour before reaching the turnoff towards Source Lake. As we traversed into the bowl above Source Lake the sun began to rise, casting a deep red light across the mountains behind us. The approach to Source Lake is mostly flat, but after reaching the lake you slog straight uphill for the remainder of the approach.
We abandoned our snowshoes below a couloir that would hopefully take us to the bowl below Chair Peak and began the short, but steep, slog to the base of the route. There was more fresh snow than we expected, about 6 inches of powder over a thin layer of crust. While it wasn't too difficult to travel through, if you didn't kick your steps enough it was easy to slide backwards, expending more energy. We climbed the couloir over hardened avalanche debris and through a steep section of trees before cresting a ridge where we could finally see our objective.
The route climbs the prominent buttress on the north side of Chair Peak. In good conditions the route involves mostly steep snow climbing with a bit of mixed climbing on pitch 1 and a short WI3 ice bulge below the summit. The ice pitch looked pretty thin on the approach, which wasn't super surprising, but it was impossible to know if it was climbable or not. We continued our approach, crossing more avalanche debris in the bowl before a final section of steep snow to gain the ridge below the NE Buttress. We ran into another party skinning up the bowl, also attempting the same route.
From the base of the route, conditions seemed promising. Pitch 1 appeared to be an easy, low angle snow ramp with a section of mixed climbing above. I agreed to take the first lead, so I racked up with mostly rock gear and plenty of slings. There was tat visible at the top of the ramp and I thought the climbing to that point seemed easy.
As I began my lead however, I realized conditions were worse than they seemed. Instead of firm snow that I could kick steps into, there was a thick layer of powder sitting directly on the rock below. What I thought would be easy snow climbing was actually drytooling while digging out all the holds and gear. The climbing still wasn't too challenging, but with minimal protection I moved slowly and carefully. When I reached the tat, the steeper climbing above looked pretty intimidating, so I decided to belay Preston up to me and let him lead the next section, since he has more mixed climbing experience.
In hindsight, that was a really good call. Preston set off confidently into the steep terrain, but quickly slowed down as the rock steepened. The first crux was a traverse to pull over the steepest section of the pitch. Preston found a few decent pieces of gear before delicately beginning the traverse. With some awkward moves and questionable piton placements, he dispatched the first crux and moved out of sight around the corner. After a long belay broken up by faint cursing and the sounds of crampons scraping on rock, I eventually heard the relieving sound of "off belay" over my radio.
I followed the pitch and could see where Preston had taken so long, a steep gully with practically no gear aside from a rusty piton. The hooks for my ice tools were good, but the feet were insecure and I was glad to be on top rope. With several torque moves, a couple alpine knees, and a calf lock in a short offwidth, I reached the first nice snow of the route and made my way to the anchor.
From a bit past the anchor we could see the ice pitch, it looked thin and would probably require more mixed climbing, but there was still a reasonable chance it could be climbed, especially after making it through the first pitch. Preston took the lead again and set off up the steep snow, quickly moving out of sight from the belay. In good conditions, many parties solo or simul climb this pitch, but as Preston's pace slowed I could tell the pitch was harder than we had hoped.
After half an hour on lead, I heard my radio chirp and Preston said he had to step over a large, loose block. I alerted the other party, who had reached the top of pitch 1 and had an anchor setup on an adjacent group of trees. Only a minute after this warning, I heard Preston shout "rock!" and a hunk of rock about the size of a large toaster flew past the belay. It wasn't too close to us, but was a reminder of the severity of climbing in the alpine.
When Preston neared the base of the ice, after mostly unprotectable climbing on a mix of firm snow, plate ice, and snowy rock, he radioed to me again. From the sound of it, the ice pitch was mostly rock slabs with no obvious gear placements. We were already behind schedule and so combined with that, Preston made the call to bail. I untied from the rope so Preston could rappel off some small nuts. He rappelled close to the anchor and downclimbed the final 30ft. While Preston was bailing, I setup a rappel with one of the other climbers, so we could bail as efficiently as possible. By the time Preston was back at the anchor, I was already beginning to rappel.
Despite the hours of climbing, it only took 2 rappels to reach the ground. While it was a bummer to not summit, given the conditions I think we made the right decision. After reaching the ground, we took a short snack break before hiking out. We reached the car around 6:30pm, a total of about 13 hours C2C. Overall it was a great adventure and I can't wait to try again when there's hopefully more ice on the route.
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