Source Lake, Snow Lake, Source Lake - Winter Route & Chair Peak Lake — Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2002

Snoqualmie Region > Snoqualmie Pass

Made for an early start on Valentines day to try and summit the NE Buttress route of Chair Peak out in Snoqualmie Pass. Left the trailhead at around 7am and reached Source Lake quite quickly on the Upper Alpental parking lot route. Good snow, with some other snowshoe tracks that kept us on the right path to get in the basin right below Chair Peak. Once we were near the base of the East Face, we headed right just after the ""Thumbtack"" and up a steep pass that gains the ridge that runs to the base of Chair Peaks NE Buttress. There was a large soft Bergscrund that halted us at first, so we went to check out the North Face and it was the same thing. 60-70 degree snow and ice that was pretty thin, along with the sparce areas to place pro. I called it above my head, with lack of experience of my new ice tools, so we headed back down the trail in search of waterfall ice and found some not too far out of the basin. It was an incredibly beatifully day with blue skies and spring like conditions in the upper basin (short sleeve t-shirt). Images and more to be posted at www.nwog.org in the next few days. Thanks scott@nwog.org