Sunrise alpenglow on Chair Peak, with moon in background
Elain and I wanted to climb Mount Roosevelt, and we were hopeful that the recent dry/cold spell would allow us efficient travel on top of wind-crusted snow. We got a fairly early start, leaving the trailhead about 7:30 AM. Along the trail we bumped into Aaron and Touray, two fellow UWCC climbers. They were headed to the Alpental Falls, so we soon parted company. We tried to take the summer trail to Snow Lake, but the tracks in the snow went into a steep rocky section below the ridge. Elain led up through one steepish section of snow-ice that was good cramponing practice for me. Further up, it got steeper and more rocky than we wanted, so we started back down. At one point I fell through a hole in the snow and bashed my left knee on a rock (two weekends in a row!) Soon thereafter, we decided that rather than wandering around trying to find the correct trail to the ridge, we would just go via the Source Lake basin. We walked upvalley until we reached the head of the Source Lake basin. We had lunch beneath a large boulder, and let the sun warm us up. We decided that rather than go via Snow Lake, we would try and find a high route to Mount Roosevelt via the shoulder of Chair Peak. We started up the snow slope towards Chair Peak and within an hour we were at the Thumb Tack Rock. We saw some snowboarders downclimbing a gully from the ridge east of Chair Peak, so we decided to use their tracks. Halfway up the gully, I realized why the climbers had been downclimbing so slowly; the gully was hard ice. I chopped a little ledge with my axe and put on my crampons, before continuing. Elain decided to scramble up without her crampons. At the ridge, it was windy and we were anxious to get moving again. We could see a notch below the northwest ridge of Chair Peak, but the map seemed to indicate that the terrain was pretty steep on the other side of the notch. There didn't seem to be another obvious way around the large buttress below Chair Peak's north face without dropping much elevation. It was already 1:00 PM, my left knee was hurting, and Roosevelt was still a long way off. So, we decided to just snowshoe around a bit and enjoy the views. We eventually descended along the ridge, keeping to the north side. We made good time back to the trailhead, arriving at 3:00 PM.
Sunrise alpenglow on Chair Peak, with moon in background
Elain in Source Lake basin
The Middle Fork range of the Cascades, in winter splendor
Steve snowshoeing, with Chair Peak in the background