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Chair Circumnav CW plus extracurriculars

12/5/20
WA Snoqualmie Pass
959
5
Posted by osean on 12/7/20 5:24pm

A Saturday jaunt around Seattle's most accessible alpine confirmed the not-so-amazing snow, but clear days are not to be wasted in a Nina winter.  Stronger winds did materialize near gaps and along ridges, but the terrain swirled the easterly flow in every direction. Our goal was a descent from Snoqualmie's "Matternhorn", so we chose to tack on the circumnav while already back there. Knowing that winds up high would negate some of the solar heating, we set out from Alpental around 845. 

I purchased a set of skin cleats (metal picks on a ski strap) for this season, and was not too pleased with their performance. On any steep side hill, they were no substitute for a good ol ski crampon, which led to 2 of our 6 total bootpacks on the way up to the Bryant Col. Near the col, two hard booted splitboarders intercepted us after having turned around on the same objective due to low coverage near the summit. Nonetheless, we forged ahead and had a firm ski down to the frozen Lake Malawka.  

We booted up the standard chute near the saddle, reaching the summit near 1pm. The S face in the sun did turn punchy, but not isothermal. We were pretty happy with the coverage in the summit gully while climbing up, but not so much on the way down. Admittedly, I did get scrappy with a barely covered rock slab, which knocked off my ski

The shaded ENE facing chute back into the basin stayed firm and did give us some nerves on the way up, but the chalky surface was perfect for steep skiing.  We took a risk at Chair Peak Lake and chose the waterfall gully out of exploration.  It went, but did require a small drop onto a very hard surface. A couple more systems should buff that choke out. 

Stoke was buzzing from threading the waterfall, so we chose to take the direct line up the Chair Peak Buttess instead of navigating around the lake. Unfrozen sections of Snow Lake axed out a lake crossing.  Ultimately, winds pouring onto a sun deprived N face made skinning and booting conditions difficult and we were greatly slowed down- especially from bindings freezing up on every transition.  Winds made micro features feel like macro obstacles, and I hadn't ever seen snow carved into what looked like a topo map. We made the col at sunset and found a spicy downclimb, which led to a headlamp exit. 

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Dang, solid work in the low-coverage conditions. I've done Chair circumnav a couple times, but not this variant - will have to put it on the list : ) Thanks for sharing.


Fun TR! Nice work!


Strong work! Did you keep track of your miles and vert for the day? Just curious. 


The hard way around - especially if you can't ski across the lake! That's a full-value circumnav. 


I just thought about how clocks work... Whoops! I guess we did it CW- damn digital clocks taking over!

MtnPavlas- I think the dream would to ski it CCW in March and hit pow on N slopes and corn on S summits. Maybe add in Roosevelt (or Holy Diver for the extremely motivated group).

TooSlim- We did not keep track, but I remember the caltopo track was somewhere around 5.5k vert.


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chair-circumnav-ccw-plus-extracurriculars
osean
2020-12-08 01:24:40