April 20, 2008, - Chair Peak circumnavigation

At long last, after being shut down by avy conditions and/or weather on previous attempts, I finally got to ski the Chair Peak Circumnav.  Pete, Ross and I left the Alpy upper lot around 8:00 and skinned up through light and fluffy new snow to Pineapple Basin with no one else in sight.  So imagine our surprise when we stumbled across a freshly tamped down skin track heading up towards Bryant Col out of Pineapple Basin!  There was a group of five ahead of us and I'm still not entirely sure from whence they came (since we were alone on the skin up the valley), but they stayed ahead of us and broke trail all day, so Group of Five, we thank you. :)

The ski down to Melakwa Lake was ridiculous.  My mouth kept getting filled with snow because I couldn't stop smiling (or hooting) and the face shots just kept coming! 

Skinned up to Melakwa Pass where we toyed with the idea of doing a yo on the upper slopes between the pass and the lake, but instead opted for forward progress.  Skied down in more delightful powder and started the skin up to the knoll on the left that marks the traditional leftside exit down to Snow Lake.  Pete mentioned that when he'd done the tour a few weeks back he noticed the couloir to the right of the knoll looked filled in.  After some hemming and hawing we decided to drop in figuring the worst that would happen would be a climb back out of it.  It paid off in spades with a fun, soft, pleasantly steep descent down to the lake. 

The snow was pretty heavy by the time we reached the lake and we thought the ski down from Snow Lake Divide to the out track might suck a little, but in fact it did not suck at all.  Back to the car by 2:30 where we ran into lots of familiar faces, all smiling at the unbelievable quality and quantity of snow to be found this late April.

Sadly no really good pics were taken by Pete or myself so nothing to show here.