Chair Peak Circumnav CCW

April 13, 2024

My first circumnavigation of Chair Peak was in February of 2013 and went clockwise, finishing across Snow Lake. Colin suggested going counterclockwise this time and cutting off the Snow Lake portion with the direct route near Chair Peak itself.

We left Seattle at about 6:45am and started our tour at 8am. It was already hot in the open sections with the sun beating down and isothermal, sloppy snow already. The first section brought us up about 2,000 feet to the shoulder of Chair Peak in about 1 hour and 40 minutes. We stopped for a snack and transitioned to ski mode. The skiing was pretty horrendous breakable crust and wet slide avalanche debris most of the way down to the West edge of Snow Lake, but it was still fun given the ambiance.

We started back up about 2 hours and 15 minutes into our day, making our way up increasingly wet snow beneath Roosevelt, but never seeing significant instability. This climb was about 1,000 feet and we reached the saddle above Chair Peak Lake about 3 hours and 15 minutes from the car. We sat here and had lunch, basking in the warm sun and soaking up the mountain views. Rather than ski down the short pitch to the lake, we traversed on skins down, then across the lake and up to the saddle below Kaleetan just under 4 hours from the car. From here, it was a quick side-hill traverse in ski mode down near Melakwa Lake where we put the skins on for the last time and made our way up to the Bryant col about 4 hours and 45 minutes in.

Given the very warm conditions and clear wet slide debris in Bryant Couloir that we could see earlier in the day, we opted for the safer descent over the shoulder of Bryant. The first few turns were pretty buttery even if they were heavy and the skiing had its moments down into the standard Pineapple Pass descent and then back out the trail to the car. We were back just shy of 5 hours and 20 minutes after leaving the car.

Great day to be outside with a good friend even if the skiing was pretty poor!

Adam on his way back across the traverse

South Ridge on Mount Jefferson

May 28, 2023

Given its distance from Seattle, Mount Jefferson had sat on my list for a while and so I was excited when I dropped a line to my friend Adam in advance of Memorial Day weekend to hear that he and his friend Eric were planning to climb its South Ridge. We left Seattle early on Saturday morning and arrived at Pamelia Lake Trailhead around 11:30am. After debating the merits of various forms of protection and gear (we went in heavy with a tent per person), we started hiking in trail runners with overnight, ski, glacier, and steep snow gear on our backs.

About a mile after reaching the PCT, we started to hit snow, but it was too patchy to make sense to switch to our boots and skins. By the time the snow was clearly continuous enough, we were nearing Shale Lake and our camp for the night and it didn’t make sense to transition. It took a little over 4 hours to make it those 8 miles from the car. We set up our luxurious array of tents and took a nap before dinner—one of my all-time mountain adventure favorite activities.

With temperatures around freezing overnight and a relatively cool day expected, we weren’t in a big rush in the morning. We were up at 5am and moving by 6am after scraping the frost off our skis. The ascent went very smoothly from camp at 5,900 feet to the point where the ridge steepened at 9,500 feet in about 3 hours. We left our skis here and switched to crampons, ascending the ridge and then steep snow just to the East of it until we reached the red saddle at about 10,250 feet roughly an hour later.

The steep snow traverse was intimidating from this vantage point, especially given a series of deep runnels cutting through it. We had a snack, got our two tools out, made sure our crampons weren’t going to skate around on us, and then I set off, offering my toes to the foothold gods. It would have been difficult to protect this section well without a lot of pickets and patience. While it was steep, the pick placements and feet were good enough that we each soloed across. The runnels were quite a 3-D challenge to get good footholds and sticks to step in and then back out, but we figured it out. It took about 45 minutes to painstakingly crab walk across this section to reach the ridge and slightly lower-angle terrain on the other side.

We continued to corkscrew around, eventually reaching a rime-covered ramp toward the summit requiring quite a bit of front pointing and high daggering. I got to a point just a few feet below the top where pulling on the final steep rime mushroom feature didn’t seem worth the risk to poke my head just over the top and so I called it good here and down-climbed. Eric and Adam had made similar decisions a bit earlier. We regrouped at the beginning of the traverse back across and were much faster on the way back with the face warming up considerably in the sun and our footsteps already being cut.

A quick romp plunge-stepping down the snow next to the ridge got us to our skis. It was about 2:30pm at this point but the snow was still in prime spring conditions and we whooped our way down the mountain, reaching our tents in about 40 minutes, savoring it and taking our time.

We decided that it would be worth beating Memorial Day traffic and not hiking out on frozen snow, so we packed up camp, skied out as much as we could, cut one switchback on snow, and then hoofed it out, aided by pain-killing whiskey in about 3.5 hours from camp to the car around 8:30pm. That made for a very late arrival home in Seattle, but it was worth having a whole holiday at home as well.

Especially in the rimed-up spring conditions we encountered, the last 1,000 feet of this route were appreciably more technical than the normal routes on other Cascade volcanoes. I was glad to have a bunch of steep snow experience before tackling this one.

See our GPS Track here

Little Tahoma via Paradise

May 13, 2023

Little Tahoma had been on my list for years but I had always prioritized other peaks and routes. With a heat wave this weekend and one day to get outside, getting high in MRNP seemed like a good plan. Colin and I decided to be responsible mountain citizens and secure a permit, which meant with work schedules that we had to wait until 7:30am when the ranger station was open. We left Seattle at 5am, secured our permit after waiting in line for a bit while all geared up at 8am, and left the Paradise parking lot just after 8am.

It was smooth sailing in the conga line up the Muir Snowfield until we curved climber’s right away from the beaten path around 8,500 feet. As we traversed onto the Cowlitz Glacier, we decided to deviate from the guidebook instructions and rise up to almost 9,000 feet to get around the crevasses and seracs. This involved a little extra effort, but was very smooth and straightforward. We then were able to slide our way down to 8,600 feet again to cross the rock rib with only a short stint on rock and dirt.

The Ingraham Glacier was even more straightforward. We did a descending traverse to 8,350 feet or so before rising back up to the Whitman Glacier access col. This face was pretty firm but we didn’t need crampons since there was an existing boot pack. We reached the col 3 hours and 15 minutes after starting our day—reasonably quick compared to the ski touring guidebook estimates, so it seemed our up and down approach across the Cowlitz and Ingraham Glaciers had paid off.

After a snack, we booted (with some terrible isothermal post holing) up the steep snow just below the rock cliffs and did a steep traverse on snow that was pretty warm and slushy but not showing signs of full-on wet slide. This brought us to the cirque below the Southeast Face of Little Tahoma at about 9,200 feet. We skinned for a ways before hooking into a nice boot pack which carried us up about 800 feet below the summit. Some trail breaking in snow from here (ski tracks must have filled in the boot pack) got us to 100 feet from the top where we scrambled up rock, across the ridge, and then down and back up to the summit.

The last 50 feet or so were heads-up in ski boots, but we never felt the need to get the rope out in either direction. We reached the summit 6 hours and 20 minutes from the car and soaked in our up-close-and-personal view of Rainier. The exposure on the Northwest Face of Little Tahoma is pretty breathtaking from the top.

Our descent from the summit to our skis was forgettable in deep isothermal slush but the ski from there made up for it, with heavy, buttered corn and a perfect slope angle to enjoy it. We retraced our steps back out and got to the car just over 9 hours after we’d started. This day ended up being a bit bigger and more effortful than expected with our extra elevation gain in both directions and the slushy snow, but was right within the time expectation we had. Great day!