The weekend before last, once again the weather in the Cascades was pretty soggy. What’s with the gorgeous weeks and cloudy weekends? To make the most of it, Matt, Eric, Becca, Sophia and I decided to stay a little closer to home and headed up to Denny Creek for a romp up two of the spikier Snoqualmie Pass area summits. It ended up being pretty cloudy with some rain, so we ultimately bailed on Chair Peak but still had a great day.
We set off from a damp-but-not-raining Denny Creek trailhead after dropping a car at Alpental to increase exit possibilities. The clouds were thick above us, and the trail was pretty quiet past the waterslide. At the outlet of Melakwa Lake we crossed the creek and headed up the climbers’ trail towards Kaleetan, quickly climbing into the clouds. It was beautiful in an atmospheric sort of way, in and out of the fog, and before long we reached the short easy gully scramble to the summit in a total whiteout.
Crossing the outlet of Melakwa Lake
Heading up into the clouds on Kaleetan
Foggy ridge walking on Kaleetan
Traversing some talus towards the final scramble up Kaleetan
Becca and Matt on the summit of Kaleetan, enjoying the great views
We had a hankering to descend Kaleetan via the White Ledges to the east, which would make our descent down towards Melakwa Pass and our approach to Chair Peak more direct. None of us had ever climbed the White Ledges, the visibility was only 100 feet or so, and we had done minimal routefinding research, but we set off nonetheless, downclimbing east from the summit into the fog. After some steep and chossy class 3/4, we were confronted by a cliff, and after poking around, we decided to just climb back up to the summit and descend the standard route. We downclimbed the South Gully and continued down the climbers’ trail until about 1/5 of a mile south of the summit, then downclimed a short steep obvious gully into the talus filled basin between Kaleetan and Chair. Armed with Beckey’s brief description of the route of the West Face of Chair, we were below the clouds and filled with a renewed sense of optimism.
Foggy downclimbing on the east side of Kaleetan
Matt and Eric attempting to scope a route down through the cliffs…
While Becca and Soph look on from above, unimpressed!
Descending the gully off of the standard route up Kaleetan
Walking through the talus below Melakwa Pass, which is behind folks in this photo.
We climbed up some easy loose talus until at the base of the face proper, then started scrambling. The climbing was clean and easy at first, but after only a few hundred vertical feet, it steepened and became looser. It started to rain lightly, making the slabs quite a bit slipperier, and Becca knocked a multi-microwave size block by barely touching it. All of these factors combined to suggest that we should bail, and bail we did, downclimbing back to the basin quite carefully on the wet rock.
Becca, Matt, and Soph climbing talus below the West Face of Chair Peak, with Melakwa Lakes in the distance and Low Mountain behind.
Becca traversing some steeper rock on the West Face of Chair, with Kaleetan shrouded in clouds to the left.
Back in the basin below Melakwa Pass, we walked through talus down to Melakwa Lakes, then ran the trail back into Denny Creek and down to the car, stopping for a quick (and not warm!) dip in the Snoqualmie before heading back to town.
Heading around Upper Melakwa Lake on the way out
Matt and Eric cooling off in the Snoqualmie River near the car