Saturday morning we woke up to a bunch of new snow. Not a good sign because the route would be buried. But we had bacon:

These ice tools are good for something

After a leisurely breakfast we hiked up to Hubba Hubba and found it doing this:

We took our packs off and waited in a debris-free area and watched more snow come down. After an hour of dawdling it looked like the sloughs were slowing down and getting smaller, so Sketchy decided to go for it and started up Hubba Hubba Center (the line with the pretty icicle curtain). It worked out fine — the only showers he took were after flipping off the route while tying in and after he had set the anchor and was belaying me up.

After we finished the first pitch there was more snow coming down around us, so we decided to bail to a tree anchor a short traverse to the left. I managed to place one screw in decent ice and sling the ropes over a horn to protect my traverse, but the after that was a slab covered with a thin sheet of ice. Oops. Nothing to do except scrape across it to the tree. When Sketchy got to that part he was a little nonplussed, especially since I had scraped some of the ice off, but he found some mossy crack to wedge his pick in so he was fine.

Ice climbing is surprisingly time consuming (especially when we have to wait for a night’s snowfall to clear off the route), so when we got down it was already time to head down. We hung out with a friendly husky mix named Solstice who was loitering around our campsite and then went to the Munchen Haus in town (they have heaters in the winter). When we got back to camp we had a surprise.

Bacon Thief

Someone stole all our bacon and eggs! And then walked on the picnic table, leaving his big paw prints so we knew exactly who it was! At least he left us some coffee and a jar of salsa.

When we woke up the next morning we had high hopes for another day of ice climbing, but we had another surprise. Rain! Ice climbing under snowballs is bad enough but ice climbing in rain is a bit much. So we had our breakfast of coffee and salsa and left. At least the rain meant that we wouldn’t have any trouble driving on the unplowed road…

Seattlites

There were 8 of us and 3-ish lines so things got split up pretty reasonably. Sketchy and I got an anoymous line between HH Left and HH Center. Unfortunately Sketchy broke a crampon about 3/4 of the way up the first pitch, had to downclimb to his last screw, and then lower down so I could give him my left crampon. Trying to do the higher pitches with 2 people and 1.5 sets of crampons didn’t seem like a great idea, so after I followed the route we rapped down. Everyone else was still finishing their routes and descending, so I did get to lead about half of the pitch to a tree, my first lead on ice (though it probably shouldn’t count, since I spent half the time digging out the tree so I could get to the trunk and set an anchor).

Hubba Hubba Left/Center

The rope is moving slowly but steadily. My partner, Sketchy, hasn’t placed a single piece of gear yet, and I’ve just fed the middle marks on our 60 meter through my belay device. The Northeast buttress of Chair Peak doesn’t match the gear-catalog representation of ice climbing: no sun glittering on thick, glassy ice, no plunging frozen waterfalls, no place to put ice screws. So far it’s been one mixed pitch of ice-cemented rocks, two of steep snow with occasional rocks and bushes. One of the steep snow pitches happened to have about 15 feet of ice that could be recognized as a frozen waterfall. We’re now on another snow pitch, which should be the last (supposedly, not that we’ve got a route description with is).

The climbing has felt easy to me, but I haven’t been leading. The protection is what’s sparse, and Sketchy’s a little stressed out, judging by the grumbling and ranting coming from above.

The snow is dust over a styrofoam-like crust over sugar. The crust holds together adequately, but occasionally a large chunk breaks off and dissolves into a bucket load of sugar while it slides down the slope. A chunk comes down following the rope line and I duck left behind the medium sized rock that’s both anchor and shelter. The leader of a party of 3 behind us has climbed past me and is now enthusiastically cursing and digging around in the snow for his own anchor. I hear another large chunk of styrofoam snow sliding down the slope from his position and duck to the right around the rock.

Feed rope out. Duck behind rock. Knock snow off my boots. Repeat.

The rope stops, with just a few feet left. My turn to follow. The biggest challenge has been trying to reach the gear loops on my harness around my puffy down jacket and the waistbelt of my pack. On this pitch I don’t have to worry about that. The single piece of protection is a girth hitched sling that I don’t even have to loosen to pull over its rock, so it doesn’t take long to reach the belay. Actually, I reach Sketchy sitting down in the snow, running the rope around a ridge as the belay.

We’re done with the technical climbing, and the summit is just a scramble away (supposedly, not that we can see it). The last time I climbed Chair it was early summer, and we sunbathed on the summit block while admiring the view. Today, no sun, no views, and, so close to solstice, no daylight, so no summit.

The first rap station is barely visible below, a rainbow of frozen webbing around a very gnarled small tree. Not the best anchor ever, but it’s good enough to be our ticket down the gully-slash-wind-tunnel to a hopefully uneventful walk out in the dark.

Descending

• Chair Peak, Northeast Buttress