May 12, 2012, Chair Peak

So, I decided to bag a beauty in my backyard, lone ranger style.  Aware of the snowpack status and deteriorating stability as the warm up continues and big slides are going to be happening, I headed out relatively early and was skiing from the upper Alpental lot by 6:30am.  Chilly at the car, with some wind blowing from up the valley and an inversion in place.  Once near Source Lake and in the basin, there were wet slide avalanches but they appeared to be only from the recent layer of top snows, not entrained into the 3' of slush under the current crust.  Headed up towards the north spire and into the upper basin and then the couloir that takes you to the south summit with a plan to evaluate from there, but to ski the south shoulder down to Bryants Couloir if I got there in reasonable time.  Put on my ski crampons and skinned until it was steep enough to don the boot crampons and ice axe.  Easy kicking up to the summit.  Being the first time up there for me (finally), I was surprised to find out that I had to rock climb/scramble up the ridge about another 20 meters to get to a spot where you can ski from. The ridge is loose rock, and a bit sketchy but I made it without too much trouble in my crampons.  Had a quick bite and put on the new Hardsides.  Ski down was pretty good corn, stayed skiers right and worked my way down to just above the couloir where I found that it was quite a tricky entrance due to the snow having melted out quite a bit.  I had to really survey my options and was considering a down climb but found a way through eventually.  Skiers right of the couloir was awesome skiing, inside the couloir was a real mix bag and very difficult skiing.  Worked my way down to source lake and rolled out of there.  Was back at the car in 3.5 hours.  Headed into town and grabbed my kiteboarding gear and headed to Jetty Island for a daily double.  A great tour, highly recommended peak bag in our back yard.  PacNW rocks!

Picks here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/timmyfitz1/ChairPeak51212?authuser=0&feat=directlink

GoPro fogged up on my decent, so no worthy skiing footage unfortunately.