Basic Alpine Climb - The Tooth/South Face

Alex Fedora checked out the winter route before we started and deemed it too melted out, so we took the trail.  The trail is still mostly snow covered with some melted out sections, mostly low down, but the snow was compacted and made for fairly fast travel.  We were able to cut over and join the winter route a little above Source Lake, earlier than the second trail intersection, which saved a little distance.

It was a warm day but cool in the morning and there were some harder, icier sections.  We put on crampons at one point and wore them until the pass.  We never needed them but they didn't hurt either.  We didn't use them on the descent.

The big question of course is the condition of the moat at Pineapple Pass.  Alex took the picture below.  As you can see the only viable exit now is climber's left, which although non-trivial was considered safe and secure enough to be done with no protection.  It will likely vary by day.

On the other side of the pass, the "high road" option was melted out but we chose the "low road" squeezing into a moat between hard snow and the rock wall.  After that was a section of hard snow which we walked on with ice axes but no crampons.  The final rock scramble up as well as the climb itself were snow free.