This week's cold temperatures got Elain and me wondering whether some of the short alpine ice routes at Snoqualmie Pass might be coming into shape. We decided to head up there and check things out. We had Elain's parents coming for a long visit on Monday, so an overnight trip was out of the question. Instead we got up at 3 AM on Saturday and drove up to Snoqualmie Pass with our day packs. In the darkness of the Alpental parking lot, we could make out some of the surrounding landscape, and were startled at how little snow there was. So we decided to leave the snowshoes in the car. Our original plan was to attempt to climb Chair Peak via the Northeast Buttress, a route we had done before (albeit in summer conditions). The summer approach trail for Source Lake was still being used, since the road to the upper Alpental parking lot was not yet opened. The temperature was about 20 degrees.
We started walking at about 5:00 AM. We made quick time up the well-packed snow trail. After about a mile on the trail, we noticed the trail becoming a deep trench surrounded by walls of unconsolidated snow on both sides. I started to wonder whether I would regret leaving the snowshoes in the car. We reached the head of the Source Lake basin at about 6:30 AM, under partly cloudy skies. Pink sunrise hues bled through the cloud cover in only a couple of small spots in the sky. At the head of the Source Lake basin, we noticed tracks heading left, over towards the Tooth. We figured we could make faster time following some tracks, so we decided to skip Chair Peak and instead attempt to climb the Tooth via the Northeast Slab route, a new route for us. A party of two was following about 30 minutes behind us, apparently headed towards the same destintaion. We turned off our headlamps and commenced the arduous slog up the snow slopes leading to the Great Scott Basin. As we passed the "Rap Wall", an established mixed-climbing area with bolted routes, we wondered why there were some apparently abandoned ropes hanging off the wall. Very little ice had formed at the Rap Wall, just a few tiny icicles and some patchy ice smears. Just above the Rap Wall we reached the top of a ridge (I believe it is called the lower Bryant Buttress), and the tracks ended there. From there, we laboriously broke trail uphill through the deep snow, cursing our decision to leave the snowshoes behind.
When we reached the talus-filled Great Scott Bowl, the Tooth was covered in fog. Since we had approached the northeast slab on several occasions before, the fog did not present a problem. The talus was more troublesome; it was mostly covered with deep snow, but lack of consolidation made for weak pockets in the snow. At one point I fell into a big hole in the snow, and bashed my knee on a rock. With some cursing I extricated myself from the hole, and resumed breaking trail. At 8:00 AM we reached the base of the approach gully for the northeast slab. Even with overmitts, Elain's hands were getting cold, so we stuffed a pair of chemical heat packs inside her mittens. From our spot in the Great Scott Bowl, we eyed the snow-filled, 40-degree approach gully suspiciously. It is a known avalanche area, and directly under the line of fire from the northeast face. The face looked to be in very thin condition, so the snow already loaded in the gully was more of a concern. Since the snow was powder for at least four feet in depth, we decided to forego our usual Rutschblock (pit) test and just hike up. Ascending the 200' high gully involved wallowing and trenching through waist-deep powder. Our penalty for leaving our snowshoes and poles at home was an hour-long struggle to reach the face. When we were just below the face, the party of two caught up to us, making fast time in our tracks. It was Eric Gratz and Paul Belitz, two climbers from the University of Washington. They split off from our tracks and started using their shovel to trench up the gully on a line parallel and to the right of ours. I continued upward with my "swimming" technique. Eventually I reached the face, and stomped out a belay platform in the snow. Elain joined me, and there we put on our crampons and got out the ropes. There was no place to put in protection, unfortunately. Elain belayed me as I climbed up a bit to explore the first pitch of the face. The face was mostly covered with a thin layer of aerated ice that was poorly bonded to the rock. A few test scratches with my ice tools confirmed that the picks raked right through this ice. I made a few lame attempts to climb up with my front points on rock features, before deciding that it would be too difficult to protect the first two pitches in these conditions. We elected to retreat. Eric and Paul also decided to retreat.
On the way back to the car, Elain was not feeling well. She started to come down with a cold, and was sneezing a lot. On the descent, clouds rolled in at it started to snow. We made it back to the car by about 1:00 PM.
Conclusions:
For some reason, we do not have any pictures from this trip. But here is a photograph showing what the Tooth looks like in thin conditions like we encountered on this trip: