May 24, 2003, Chair Peak Circumnavigation

Early Saturday morning, Jim and I set out to ski Kaleteen.  We were still able to put on our skis at the trailhead and made it up easily to the first pass in 2 hrs, 20 minutes.  The ski down to the lakes was great, fast boot deep corn.  From there we noticed that Kaleteen was melting out by the summit and we realized that we wouldnt be able to ski near the top.  We saw 3 gullies to take to reach kaleteen.  The last one had some navigation issues, the second to last one had a huge cornice, so we opted for the first one.  Some steep exposed skinning and then finally giving way to booting lead us to the ridge.  From there we saw our traverse to the peak, however the Cascades had something else in mind.  A storm quickly moved in, therefore we decided to ski down that gulley and get the hell out of there.  We skiinned up quickly to the pass above Chair Peak Lake in very high winds.  The weather got worse as it turned into a white out along with some rain.  From the pass, it looked like snow lake was melted out.  We still went down all the way to the lake to see how bad it was.  We were able to ski on the lake, while closely hugging the left shore line.  I aquired so much crap on my skiis, that I was able to skin up to the ridge above snow lake without skins.  It stopped raining and was back to the car very quickly after that.

I only noticed one slide which came off the rock above source lake.

Joshua