Intermediate Alpine Climb - Chair Peak/Voie de Chaise

This trip came together fairly last minute, so I was surprised that it filled within minutes of posting it. But then attrition occurred and we ended up as a team of 2. We left Snow Lake trailhead at 6am, started climbing at 8am, got to the summit at 11, finished rappels at 1, and arrived back at the trailhead at 3. We had to jog the last mile to make it a round number! We thought we took an inefficient route on the way up, but somehow the way down took just as long :) On the way up, we ascended talus and creek gully straight up from the end of the Source Lake overlook trail, then once on the treed bench had to do some mild bushwhacking trending climber's right to link up with the more beaten in path. On the way down we contoured along until meeting up with the Snow Lake divide which was looking so pretty and was sporting ripe huckleberries, after which we joined the conga line down the Snow Lake trail at the top of the divide.

The climb itself was straightforward, the 5.9 crux move on pitch 5 is so well protected it's dreamy. We belayed-scrambled up and back down pitch 8, and rappelled the rest. With a 70m rope everything was really easy. There were 2 parties behind us and shouts of "rock rock" were very frequent. One rock popped out of the rock matrix as Rene stepped on it, and exploded on its way down, and the most effort of the climb was spent trying not to knock stuff down. We did not get hit by anything but gravel, but we had made a point to be the first party on the route and we were glad we did.