The waterfall partway up the trail to Lake Malaqua.
The climb starts at Denny Creek, and takes the trail up to Lake Malaqua -- the trail was exceedingly muddy and sloppy.
It took about two hours to get up to the lake, while the weather went from overcast to a light drizzle. After reaching the lake, I headed north, not feeling very good about it, but figuring I ought to have a look around. When I got to where I could see the peak, I felt pretty intimidated. It is high, steep, and rocky, and today was shrouded in clouds. As the rain picked up I climbed the lower scree slopes, and finally headed for a patch of trees for shelter and a bagel break. The weather didn't let up, and so after I'd finished, I figured I'd head back down, but I saw after getting back on the rock that I was almost at the altitude I needed to be at to get to the first saddle, so I figured, I might as well have a look.
On I pressed, and got to the slabby rock face that looked so intimidating from below. It turned out to be nicely contoured with little ledges, and the slabs were peeled away from the wall enough to allow really reassuring handholds. I worked my way up to the top of them, and found the gully Beckey talks about, and scrambled up it, and reached the summit about 1:00, about an hour and a half after leaving the lake (Beckey says 3 hours.) This contrasts with Whitehorse, where I was almost exactly at his rated time. My thought was that he based his time on the supposition that people who want to do this weeny of a climb probably aren't in very good shape.
I found the summit book and signed it, and took a picture of myself, in my hat and STP jacket, and headed down. I had the cellular phone, but completely forgot about calling Heidi. Across the valley was Chair peak, which I'd though about climbing also, as a "two-fer." In good weather, it would have been feasible, I think.
On the descent, the weather got much worse -- 20' visibility, wind and rain, really unpleasant. I descended as fast as I could, and inadvertently went too far east, and descended the wrong side of the ridge. I kept finding and loosing a trail, so I figured I must be on the right track, probably a better route than my ascent route. In retrospect, these were probably game trails. I was probably about 1000 feet down before I realized that I had for sure gone wrong. I pulled out my map and verified that I was on the wrong side of the ridge, heading down to a lake called "My Lake" which had no trails shown on the map.
I thought briefly about being stranded, and then headed back up the rockfall. I ended up ascending to the gully before being able to descend down the slabs. Boy did it feel good to see Lake Malaqua again!
The descent was scarier than the climb, and probably slower. I didn't feel very safe until I was down on the snow slope at the bottom of the peak. At that point I climbed back up the other side (the Chair Peak side) to get a good shot of my peak, including the slabby rock.
On the descent, I came upon some good-sized clumps of what I assumed were mountain goat fur (wool?) caught in the branches. I thought about saving one or two, then decided it was too tacky. Now I wish I had.
I got to the car soaked to the skin -- my underwear was drenched. My map had more or less disintegrated in my pack, and the Beckey book (I had to bring it since I hadn't photocopied the necessary pages) was pretty wet. I had a dry shirt to put on, and shoes, but no dry pants.