Click this picture to see an image with the North Face route drawn on.

Considering the alpine nature of the climb, we got off to a very late start. We met a Bruce's place at 6am and started hiking from the Alpental ski area parking lot at 7:30.

The approach to the Source Lake basin was very scenic. It has been a snowy winter here, so the mountains, trees, and formations were beautiful.

This is the view from the ridge high above Source Lake. Immediately behind me (to the west) from this position is the northeast ridge of Chair Peak, the ridge in the center of the photo at the top. To the north from here we could see Glacier Peak and Mt. Baker, and to the south the skyline was filled with the other peaks in the Snoqualmie Pass area: Red, Snoqualmie, Guye, the Tooth and others.

This ridge was pretty impressive and airy in places. To the left of where Bruce is standing is a cliff that drops down onto the slopes above Source Lake. To the right, the snow drops swiftly down to Snow Lake.

Here we are, making the final non-technical ascent to the start of the North Face route proper. From here the face looms menacingly. Bruce and Kevin are up ahead, and the two immediately in front of me are another team that came up behind us.

Looking down at Snow Lake

The start to the climb was guarded by a bergschrund, were the snow on the lower mountain was slowly breaking away from the ice and snow on the face. This made the first few moves a little scary and committing. There was no safe way back across the crevasse without leaving gear behind.

The first pitch ended in a steep, narrow chute of hard ice, and the second was a run-out 200 feet of snow. John, the leader of the team behind us, is just exiting the ice chute.

This is the view to the east from the top of the third pitch. Behind the the face we are on, Mt. Snoqualmie can be seen with its rocky north side.

The last pitch was interesting. It started with some nice snow climbing under the rocks, and then traversed out to a short section of steep ice. In the photo, Bruce has stopped to place an ice screw. After climbing through the ice, the route continued up snow to a col between two small peaks. Just under the col, the snow steepened with the beginnings of a cornice right at the top. It was great climbing in a fabulous position.

Here I am on the top!

From the top, we were finallly high enough to see over the local peaks down to the volcanoes in the south. Mt. Rainier is the large mountain in view, and it was so clear, we could see most of the major features on the Liberty Ridge, our goal for the spring.

It was a beautiful day on a hard and classic Cascades climb. And on a classic like the North Face of Chair Peak that has a relatively easy approach, there were a lot of people. I think that fifteen people climbed that route on that day. Due to our late start, we had to wait in line and thus didn't top out until about 5pm. At least we got to see evening views like this one.

Getting down proved harder than getting up. Here I'm looking up the steep snow/ice gully that was our first rappel.

The bottom half of the first gully was not to bad, so we down climbed the rest of this part to avoid setting a another rappel.

It was getting dark and we still had a ways to go on the descent. We rappelled through a cornice and into a steep couloir. Our ropes ran out with quite a ways to go, so we down climbed the rest and then hiked back with thoughts of dinner.