Failing Upwards: Skiing Chair Peak's North Face

If you spend any amount of time in the mountains, you'll find you quickly become acquainted with "failure". You'll spend hours or days or weeks planning out an objective, only to be unable to execute on the day for any number of reasons. Weather changing, route conditions deteriorating, getting lost, etc, etc, etc. If you also suffer from being a "weekend warrior" like myself this familiarity compounds quickly, as you only have access to so many days in a season to try and piece together all of the moving parts.

Failing over and over again will also change your relationship with its opposite - success. I have found it morphs and grows, broadening until it begins to take over space in your mind, leaving little space for much else. After years of having plans fall through and hopes dashed I have seen my definition of failure slowly dwindle, shrinking until it now only includes two real scenarios:

1. Getting hurt
2. Not making it home

Either of those make for an undeniable failure of a day, but anything besides them - whether things go according to plan or not - is a day spent in the mountains. Sure I want to do something cool, to run, or climb, or ski the big spectacular thing (something worth writing about), but that isn't the end-all-be-all. One pitch of climbing, a single good ski run, or even just a few hours spent on a trail make for a more enjoyable day than almost anything else I could be doing. This mindset, of course, doesn't work for everyone - though I will try to infect anyone I'm with to join me in this kind of positivity. If you focus on the lessons learned, the silver linings, and the time spent with nature and friends it comes easier and easier.

I say all of this because my season has already been full of incomplete items and false starts - and the first real attempt of the "Chair Circumnavigation" was no exception.

The day started on rocky footing: warm temps, metric tons of avalanche debris from recent shedding covering much of the terrain, and rain coming in the afternoon giving us a looming deadline. Our little crew had been trying to find a window to attempt the "circumnav" for awhile now, and despite all of the caveats we figured it was still possible if we managed our time correctly.

I met up with Jason and Cameron for a semi-early start up to the pass. We arrived to a single other car in the Alpental back lot (definitely a red-flag at such a popular spot). The sun had started to come out though and we were feeling hopeful about our chances, so we geared up and started up the trail. We made quick work of it, only stopping once to let a cadre of snow-shoeing backpackers come down past us at the narrow section around Source Lake Falls, but otherwise we had the forest to ourselves.

We had seen all of the reports of recent avalanche activity in the basin, but seeing it in person was shocking. Two weeks of high-temps had caused nearly everything to shed down and out of Chair Peak's main slide paths, and rippling waves of snow were piled up on top of Source Lake.

Despite how terrible it is to have to ski over avalanche debris all of the shedding had started to let the snow pack stabilize and we were hopeful of finding some decent skiing down the remaining bed surface of the slide paths. It was far too warm for a real freeze-thaw cycle to start, so it wouldn't be corn, but some good spring slush would be a worthy consolation prize.

We avoided as much of the debris as possible to keep up our pace skinning and made our way up the increasing slope angle towards the Snow Lake divide. We took the shortest path and cut over before the NE ridge, taking the "North Slope Approach" up to Chair Peak Basin. We lost our solitude at this point and could hear the voices of the only other party echoing off the rock walls ahead of us. We slowly gained on them as we rose up into the Basin and found out they were heading the same way as us, but with their eyes on Cache Couloir.

After assessing at the activity in the Basin, we decided to boot up "Another Cool Chute" behind the other party rather than taking the typical approach up the notch onto the NE Buttress. The chute itself was easy booting, only a hundred feet or so, but the short access to the ridge was much steeper. We clambered up cautiously and found a perfect skin track leading to the base of the north face ready for us.

We had been making good time, but the sun had completely disappeared and winds were picking up, bringing in a swath of dark clouds. We quickly transitioned and started down the north slope. We had been working on the assumption that the north aspects would hold a somewhat supportive snow in the fall line, maybe even avoiding the severe warming of the more sun-forward aspects. The line had not been spared the high-temps though and had managed to hold onto more snow than the opposite side - leaving us with a thick gloopy mess. Skiing was slow and less enjoyable than we had hoped for. I found myself having to jump into every turn just to extract my tails from the heavy clumping and push my tips through the next turn. It was a struggle to get more than a handful of connected turns together as we pieced our way down the new terrain.

The route was straightforward enough, following the obvious fall line for 1000 feet until it ended in a large cliff band and we had to navigate through a slight choke and down a steep run off to Snow Lake's west end. Snow Lake was similarly covered in avalanche debris so we skirted across and began deliberating about our next steps. The conditions had slowed our pace and tired us out so our arrival at this point was already slightly delayed, but the incoming clouds spooked us that our window had already shrunk. This spot put us somewhere around half-way and given our current pace completing the loop would have us finishing just when the rain was originally supposed to start. Between the timeline and hesitations about the conditions we would find there were enough yellow-to-red flags to send us packing.

We skinned back along Snow Lake and up to the divide, transitioning one more time before dropping back into Source Lake Basin. To our surprise the south aspect was far more enjoyable to ski. It seemed as though more had shed here, leaving less snow to be warmed and turn to mush, and instead a thin layer of slush sat on top of a supportive bed surface allowing us to put together good turns. We ripped down to the avalanche debris and traversed across to the exit.

There were far more people out around Source Lake now to our surprise as light rain started to fall, clearly not everyone shared our reservations about getting rained on. We quickly skirted past them and went down through the luge track of the exit trail and made it back to the parking lot unscathed.

It ended up being a pretty short day: 7 miles and ~3000 feet of gain and descent. Our car-to-car time was 3 hours and 34 minutes. The line was exceptional, we are excited to go after it again in better conditions, and finally make it through the entire loop!