Trip Report
Basic Rock Climb - The Tooth/South Face
Successful summit of the Tooth in mid-June but in like May conditions.
- Wed, Jun 16, 2021
- Basic Rock Climb - The Tooth/South Face
- The Tooth/South Face
- Climbing
- Successful
- Road suitable for all vehicles
-
Like May conditions with the basin below the south face being completely covered in snow with no dangerous potholing opportunities yet. In about two weeks the conditions might be different. Snow finger took us almost all way up to the notch with no major moat issues, transition to the rock being straightforward. Continuous hard snow on the other side of the notch and on the first half of the scramble to the base of the climbing route / Pineapple Pass. The other half of the scramble was wet and sketchy (it rained the night before). The rock on the climbing route was a bit wet on the first pitch and dry for the rest of the route. After we rappelled the route we decided to do a double rope rappel in the basin as well (by leveraging the new chains at the top of the Pineapple Pass where used to be lots of runners around the big boulder; someone removed all the runners and did setup the chains instead). We did deal with some moat / transition to snow issues at the end of the rappel in the gulley, which might not be an option anymore in one week or so.
Used ice axes throughout the day. Brought crampons but didn't use them.
For the first time in 5+ years we had the whole mountain and area to ourselves. No other parties the whole day.