Trip Date: August 21-22, 1999

South Chimney Peak Climbing Trip

Pete Lake
Sunrise Knob
Chimney Glacier
Chimney Rock: south peak aka South Chimney Peak (7440+ ft)

Trip Report Summary

Region: Central Washington Cascades

Sub-Region: Snoqualmie Range

Area: Alpine Lakes Wilderness

Starting & Ending Point: Pete Lake Trailhead on Cooper Lake Road (Elev. 2800 feet)

Way Points: Cooper River & Pete Lake & Lemah Meadow & Chimney Creek & Sunrise Knob (trail hike & off-trail hike & rock scramble)

Campsite: Sunrise Knob (Elev. 4650 feet)

Summit: South Chimney Peak (snow climb & rock scramble & rock climb via Chimney Glacier—East Gully—Upper East Face)

Approximate Stats: 19 miles traveled; 5000 feet gained & lost.

Related Post

>>> Chimney Rock: main peak via Chimney Glacier—East Face – August 2000

Full Trip Report

Text by Laura Zimmerman…

Day 1: Trailhead to Sunrise Knob

Under brooding, cloudy skies, with the bittersweet Celtic music that we listened to during our drive accompanying my every step, Jim and I left the parking lot on our way to climb Chimney Rock by the East Face route. The Pete Lake Trail was beautifully maintained (thank you Work Crew!), and a joy to walk on. The Natrapel seemed to do its job keeping the bloodthirsty mosquitoes at bay while we approached our base camp.

We left the trail at the first switchback in the avalanche path, just as Beckey’s book mentions, and proceeded up the Chimney Creek drainage to our base camp. There is a climber’s trail that begins at an obvious logjam that provides an excellent creek crossing. It is faint to start, but becomes more well-defined. Beckey describes the climber’s trail as 200 yards into the forest from the avalanche slope; however, we found that the trail is only about 20 yards inside the forest, adjacent to the avalanche path. It is marked in places with orange flagging.

Instead of traversing leftward along the main bench, we decided to continue upwards along the small stream, and found an excellent bivy site atop a rock knob (6.3 hours from TH) that looks down on the waterfalls, and up at the summits of Chimney Rock.

Day 2: South Peak Summit Climb + Exit

Sunday dawned cloudless, with the promise of good weather. Since I was feeling the initial energy drain of an impending summer cold, Jim thankfully decided to let me sleep past our usual 5:00am wake-up call. Because our campsite caught sunlight early in the morning, we dubbed it Sunrise Knob.

Rested, we hit the approach at 8:30am — not exactly an alpine start.  There are three ways to access the upper Chimney Glacier from the snow slope below: the icefall, the rock band, and a snow tongue to the left of the rock band.

The icefall was beautiful blue glacier ice, but we didn’t have our ice protection, so we decided to come back for that another time. A deep bergschrund on the snow tongue appeared to block easy access, so we chose the grungy middle gully of the rock band. It wasn’t glamorous, but it worked.

The moat at the base of our East Face route was deep and seemingly impenetrable, but snow blocks that had collapsed into the left side formed a “ramp” down into the moat that provided easy access to the rock.

The route is tricky to start, involving several leads of wet, slippery 4th class scrambling on the face to the left of the main gully. But after about three pitches, a system of ledges (some very wide) led to below the notch. The route is well protected using stoppers and slings.

We arrived at the notch about 1:00 pm, with 600 vertical feet of climbing behind us. With an additional 400 vertical feet to the summit, we decided we didn’t have the time to reach the Main Peak summit and safely descend, so we traversed across a series of ledges to the South Peak (4.9 hours from camp), which is a worthy summit in its own right. Standing atop the small pinnacle, we took in the view of Rainier, the Stuart range, the Olympics, and other notable peaks.

We were able to easily spot the ledges on the descent, and rappel over some of the steeper sections using one rope. From base camp (3.1 hours from summit), it was another 3+ hours to the parking lot, at a brisk pace. The light-colored sand on the trail provided a nice contrast that stood out well during our dusk retreat.

Approach Route Sketch

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