Kaleetan Peak

The Interstate 90 highway is the main route between the cities and ports of Puget Sound and the hinterlands to the east. It is a busy arterial with three or four lanes of traffic moving each direction and provides access to a number of trails in the Washington Cascades. On some of these, one can hike for up to an hour before the noise of the traffic is totally supplanted by the sounds of nature.

Elevated high over Denny Creek, the westbound lanes of I90 are supported on massive concrete columns. About 0.6 mile from the parking lot, Denny Creek Trail 1014 passes under the highway before beginning its ascent into the mountains.

Denny Creek passes over 60' to 70' high Keekwulee Falls (3330'). About 0.4 mile beyond, Snowshoe Falls (3500') may be even more impressive. Situated deep in a heavily forested gorge, it is difficult to obtain even a partial glimpse. 11:15 AM.

Water cascades down cliffs below snowfields on the west flank of Bryant Peak (5801'), east of Melakwa Lake (4500'). 6:15 PM.

Kaleetan Peak (6259', center), is north of Upper Melakwa Lake (4500', foreground). 1:45 PM.

Not reading the route description carefully cost me about 2 hours. My route was up the long snowfield to the left of Melakwa Pass (5160', at the end of the valley) to the east ridge. At 5600', below the poorly protected 5th class rock of the east face, I traversed south to the upper snowfield (visible above and left of the long snowfield) and reached the class 2 ledge system that leads to the south face of the summit.

Chair Peak (6238', right of center) is a short hike via the Snow Lake Trail 1013. It has several reasonable climbing routes including a class 3 chimney route. Its accessibility and popularity with inexperienced climbers, coupled with loose rock on steep slopes, leads to accidents such as the fatal fall on 9/8/01 of a rock climber on the east face. It is a good mountain to avoid on weekends. This image is from 5500' on the east ridge of Kaleetan Peak. 3 PM.

My fastest hour ascent (descent) rates were 1140 ft/hr (-1560 ft/hr) at 10:45 AM (5:30 PM). The descent rate of -3280 ft/hr for the interval at 5:52 PM includes the glissade on the long snowfield of the third image. These data were logged by an altimeter watch.

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