Basic Alpine Climb - The Tooth/South Face

A few inches of snow fell two days before our trip. The upper bowl below Pineapple pass has a few inches of fresh snow covering the talus. The scramble around the backside of the pass to gain the base of the climbing route is also slick with patchy snow. Exercise extreme caution here and discuss with your participants about their comfort/ability level. I imagine some parties may elect to have a handline with slick conditions. There were small patches of snow on the larger ledges on the climbing route, but mostly avoidable and did not cause us any issues. There are a few pieces of perma-pro on this route, if you plan on clipping through any of it be sure to give your follower a heads up that they won't & don't need to remove it. Beware of a loose tree towards the top of the second pitch. The tree looks solid enough for a belay anchor and is in a good spot but give it a few good pushes and shakes and you'll see why it isn't. It is a crooked tree about 10 feet above a bomber rappel anchor that you could use instead. Or, once you get to the loose tree, continue climbing up and left to a more secure group of trees. The third rap station (the one below the loose crooked tree) is not reachable with a single 60m rope rappel. You can create a handline for participants to scramble down the last 10 or so feet to the rap anchor, or if people are comfortable they can just downclimb- it is very easy scrambling.