Chair Peak, Round 2 - A Double Dose

Aaron and I set out to climb Chair Peak; the location and access for this peak make it a great winter training ground for my plans later in the season, and I can't get enough! Our plan was to try do to both the Northeast Buttress and the North Face in one day. It worked out fantastically. Snow conditions were firm heading up from the parking lot, and we didn't need snowshoes. Unfortunately, my camera at this point was still stuck on a messed up ISO setting (I thought perhaps that I had damaged a light sensor on it), so the pictures I have are mostly washed out.

We took a 'left' variation at the start of the northeast buttress, and Aaron belayed me up to some trees. After that, we simulclimbed the rest of the way to the top in one long pitch. It is amazing how fast you go when you do this! We were up there after only an hour or so of climbing (at least that's what I recall). We made a quick descent and traversed back around to the north face route. We climbed this in two long pitches, with me stopping to belay Aaron once in a stand of trees. Aaron's a totally solid climber and cruised the whole way up.

Additionally, I'd like to thank Aaron for his patience. I dropped an ice screw (d'oh!) while on the north face, and saw it plummet to the snow slopes below. He was patient enough
to wait for me while I traversed back around to the north face for the second time that day to retrieve it. Fortunately, it was easy to locate! It was a brand new one, too.

Chair Peak - Round I

Pete and I decided to team up for a climb of the Northeast Buttress of Chair Peak in late January. Trip reports on cascadeclimbers.com indicated this route had a lot of parties on it the weekend before; we thought a weekday climb would capitalize on the good conditions and let us have the climb to ourselves. We lucked out on both counts.

My camera has been acting kind of screwy lately; only much later did I find out I had messed up the ISO settings; this explains the washed-out nature of a lot of the photos. Fortunately, Pete made a nice video montage of his photos and video available here. Kudos to Pete for the DJ Shadow/Cut Chemist soundtrack.

This was my third time getting out on some ice this winter. There's only a bit of ice on this climb; the vast majority is steep snow. Pete didn't have any tech tools, so we split my ice tools and supplemented with a regular mountain axe each. We were keeping it real now! This was one of the steeper routes Pete had been on, and we decided to pitch out the whole thing. Pete set a raging pace on the approach, and let me take the more technical leads. We didn't climb super fast, but made steady progress. It was pretty cold out that day, and we were glad to have the puffy jackets for belaying.

Pete took the lead as we simulclimbed the last bit to the summit on steep snow. We made victorious salutes on the summit pyramid. This route (and others on the peak) are frequently soloed by area climbers, and it isn't a terribly proud or awesome summit. That said, the climb is really fun and the position is great on the steep ridge.

St. Helens Evening ascent - a.k.a. Skunked on Rainier by National Park Service

Aaron and I wanted to climb Rainier during the weather inversion in mid-February. Telemetry from NWAC revealed that it was almost balmy up at 10,000', and generally cold down low. We were inspired by a trip report from the climbing rangers practically exhorting all who climb to com and get it while the getting was good. Our plan was for a two-day ascent. This hopefully would work out well, as Christine and I were hosting company the next evening for the swearing in of the new president.

We met up at a very civilized hour and headed down to Rainier. I was super stoked. Since the Muir hut was open, and we were planning on the Gib Ledges route, we were going to head up super light - no ropes, no tents. Unfortunately, we got a major buzzkill from the rangers who informed us that, due to problems with the road being only open one way, they were not going to allow overnight camping up on the hill on a weekday (we were there on Monday morning). I was pretty pissed, especially after the ravings of the ranger blog saying how dope climbing conditions were at the moment.

So.... it was about 10am and we were all loaded up with no place to go. On top of that, I didn't really have time for us to modify our plans for anything longer due to social engagements. I casually suggested we could go down to St. Helens and do the walk-up, returning home way late in the evening. This way we could enjoy the weather inversion and at least get out in the hills. We didn't have any technical climbing equipment with us for other stuff in the area. Also, it didn't seem like it was that far south.....

Several hours and a couple of hundred miles later, we roll up towards St. Helens. The drive was f***ing long. On the road up to the Sno-Park, we saw an SUV precariously perched down a gully after sliding off the road (fortunately it was unoccupied!).

By the time we got all ready to go it was damn near 4pm. Tons of skiers passed us on their way out. We even got puzzled inquiries from other climbers/hikers. "You guys know it's gonna be dark soon, right? There's still a couple of thousand feet elevation." Thanks, folks! We know what we're doing, even if it seems silly.

We made pretty quick work of the approach. Snowshoes weren't necessary up higher; the snow was unbelievably firm! Darkness set in pretty quickly. We snapped a couple of pictures before losing the sun, however. Aaron is posing with a cool view of Adams in the background.

Once the sun went down, it was kinda hard to stay motivated to keep going. The way up was obvious, thank goodness. Aaron only brought one liter of water and was starting to feel the effects of dehydration once we neared the summit. He encouraged me to press on for the final couple of hundred feet. Fortunately, there wasn't a huge cornice overhanging the edge of the crater rim. I was hoping there might be some glow down in the caldera visible in the dark night, but no dice. The stars were out, however, and it was quite beautiful in its own way.

Going down went smoothly. It took a little concentration to make sure we got back to where we cached the snowshoes. Here is a picture of what the last 4 hours of the hike/climb looked like.

After enjoying my second big fast food meal of the day, we drove on back to Seattle late into the night. INXS helped power the drive home, and I was pretty beat. After getting my car at the park-n-ride, I tuned into NPR where there was already early morning coverage of election day on the east coast! 3:30am west coast time = 6:30am east coast time, so I guess that wasn't really a surprise. It was a fun day. Thanks for driving your car all over the state, Aaron!

January '09: Mt. Shuksan - White Salmon Glacier Ski Tour

Pete Hetrick and I linked up through cascadeclimbers.com. Since losing my job, I've been always looking for new partners who have a flexible schedule. Pete has some weekday availability, and we decided to head out for a 1 - day ski tour of the White Salmon glacier on Mt. Shuksan mid-January.

As in 1-day Seattle-to-Seattle. We meet up at the Ravenna Park & Ride at 1:30am, which seemed pretty reasonable at the time. The drive up went really quickly in the middle of the night. My drowsiness was kept at bay with a little help from the late night (or early morning?) Jack in the Box.

I'm not much of a skier, and I tried my best to let Pete know this so as not to get expectations up. The approach involved a couple of hours of skinning through the trees from the Baker ski resort. It was my first real ski tour this winter, and was tedious. We ended up crossing four or five gullies. Pete had no problem with this; I, on the other hand, had to get creative. This included unclipping skis, dropping them down into the gully, then Batman-ing down tree branches since I couldn't really ski down the steep gully walls.

Eventually we broke out of trees, and I was relieved. Now all we had to do was cross several large avalanche debris fields. The temps were stable and we weren't too concerned about anything coming down. Eventually we made our way up to the snow slopes below the White Salmon. We were treated to a nice sunrise on the peaks to the north.

After some discussion, Pete and I quickly began referring to the snow conditions this day as a 'death crust'. As in a very hard but breakable crust with unconsolidated powder underneath. My resort skiing skills would be worthless here!

The White Salmon was kinda steep and kinda icy, so we opted to mount the skis on the packs and boot up. Very quickly we decided that we wouldn't be skiing down given the icy conditions. Stashing the skis, we headed up anyway for a nice ascent. We figured we had time to top out on the glacier and head down in order to make it out by dark.

Eventually we saw some ski tracks higher up on the glacier. Someone had skied this bad boy a few days earlier. To make myself feel better, I conjectured that they got in on much better snow conditions (e.g. less icy and less crusty) than we encountered. Seems like it might have been the tracks of some local celebrities, given the date of our trip.

Up high it became thigh-deep postholing, and our progress slowed significantly. We turned back a few hundred feet from the top of the glacier. Eventually it was time to put the skis on. Pete looked like he was posing for pictures for an instructional guide to telemark skiing with his good form.

I, on the other hand, couldn't keep it upright long enough for Pete to even take a good picture of me moving. So just look at this image and trust that I made my way down in one piece.

Once down, it was back through the trees to the resort. We crossed the avy debris fields without incident and got back to the car for about a 10 hour day (plus about 6 hours of driving). It was a good time. Thanks for a good day, Pete!

December 2008 - South Early Winters Spire

My first real winter climb of the season was the southwest couloir on South Early Winters Spire.

Matt was free for the day, so we decided to drive 4 hours each way plus break serious trail for a few hundred feet of steep snow in a couloir. The bang-for-the-buck ratio was not so high on paper, but I had a blast nonetheless.


We snuck in just days before the North Cascades Highway was closed for the winter. This climb is usually done after the road opens in spring, so we had the opportunity to climb it in 'early season' conditions. Which is code language for not much snow over rock.


I had a great time this day. We bootied a bunch of gear (people had left a bunch of nice biners on various fixed pieces), and the views were pretty nice.

The salvation of this day was the weather. It was raining/cloudy/snowing pretty much the whole drive until we got to Rainy Pass, and then things were just bluebird a few miles beyond at Washington Pass. There was little wind, the temps were pretty moderate, and the sun shone. It gave a good chance to put on the crampons and 'bust the rust' on the skills.

Here's a picture of Matt that might be one of the coolest photos I've ever had the opportunity to take.

It was also around this time that I had decided to try to put together a climbing trip to Alaska the following spring. Matt had a pretty awesome trip there a couple of years ago himself, and was definitely an inspiration in sharing his experiences.



The day ended with us loading the car at Washington Pass, seeing a beautiful glow of sunset on the Wine Spires / Silver Star massif across the valley. Good times.

Getting Started

Around the time I lost my job with Washington Mutual, I decided to dedicate myself to not finding a job, but instead indulging my hobby of climbing and mountaineering. I've been very happy with this decision, and decided to start this blog as a way to record what I'm doing and share it with others.