April 18, 2004, Chair Peak Circumnavigation

On Sunday, Gary and I headed out of seattle at 5:30am in search of Kaleetan's South Face with some confusing weather reports.  Chair peak basin was filled with clouds and fog and the snow was bullet proof.  The sun did come out as we reached pineapple basin, but high clouds would block it enough to keep the snow from corning up.  From the ski down to Malakwa lake and on to Chair lake the snow was either icy or breakable.  It is then we also realized that the south face of kaleetan had already melted out, which was dissapointing.  When we finally arrived to south facing slopes above snow lake we seemed to miss the corn completely and the snow was extremely slushy with lots and lots of avy debris everywhere.  We were still able to ski across snow lake and a 20 minute ski down lead us back to the alpental parking lot around 2:30pm just in time to get a quick glance of everyone taking advantage of alpental's closing day.

joshua