Chair Peak Pub Crawl

Chair Peak, WA
"pub crawl"
December 17, 2006

check out this, the official awesome chair peak pub crawl video

Avalanche conditions were going to be tricky today, we knew that much. A foot plus of new snow had fallen on top of the crust from a week ago, and there were reports of graupel at Snoqualmie Pass. We decided at the parking lot to give the Chair Peak circumnavigation a go because weather was stable and visibility was very good. When we reached the steep slope up to Bryant Col, Pete dug a shovel tap test and found the 4 inches of snow sitting on top of 6 inches of graupel to slide very easily and then a one foot slab of new, consolidated snow to slide moderately easily on the week-old crust. So we bailed and skied back down to Source Lake. We skinned back up into the bowl we skied last weekend with the intention of climbing up to the ridge and dropping down onto the Snow Lake side. We climbed up the lower of two notches on the ridge, but when we topped out, we found we were cliffed out.

Back down the way we climbed we skied, then just picked the nicest looking lines around the east side of Chair, working our way around finding the easiest pickings. Hence we dubbed it the "pub crawl." We wound up getting about 4,200 feet of skiing in on mostly untracked powder with the occasional crusty section, which translates to a pretty good day.