Basic Rock Climb - The Tooth/South Face

Everything went perfectly for us.

I've updated my own description of this route, providing a guide in unnecessarily excessive detail, in the event that any new climber is looking for that beta-overload:  https://rocknropenw.com/2015/05/22/the-tooth/

Also, Amanda wrote up an excellent trip report of our day from a student's perspective: https://amandaontrail.substack.com/p/on-an-alpine-rock-climb

Rappel Anchor conditions

In short: As of right now, all rappel anchors are currently in good shape!

The longer story:  A bit of a side-project of mine is monitoring the state of the rappel anchors on this route, when I do get to visit.

Back in 2022, I had noticed excessive wear on the light rolled-aluminum rings ("SMC Descending Rings"), and made a mental-note to replace them next time I was up this route.

In 2023, I brought up a number of Fixe 10mm-stainless-steel rappel rings just in case, and was somewhat shocked to find that in the full year that had passed since my 2022 visit, no one else had done anything about those badly-worn aluminum rappel rings yet.   I managed to rebuild 3 out of the 4 rappel stations with the new beefy steel rings and yellow 7mm Metolius accessory cord.  Later that year, I was glad to see that Don Sarver is on a similar mission of stewardship, he replaced that remaining anchor with a nice large golden ring from GM Climbing.

Now this time around, in 2024, (on my personal eleventh-summit of The Tooth,) I got to check the status of how everything is doing.  I'm glad to see that the soft-goods are getting replaced year to year, some good samaritan had replaced each of my yellow cords with similar red cords, I'm guessing in early-2024.  Here are the 4 rappel stations as I found them, ordered from the top of P4 to the top of P1:

The materials in all of them look good, both the rings and the tat.  However, I have some concern about the tree at the top of Pitch-2, I think it's dying.  Near the end of 2023, its needles were orange while all the trees around it were still green.  This year again the needles are orange, but furthermore the majority of needles it used to have have fallen off, those branches are looking quite bare compared to previous years.  I had a hunch that this may be the case, and I had come prepared to rebuild this pitch-2 rappel station as a rock-based anchor rather than a tree-based anchor.  I had brought 50-feet of yellow 7mm cord, threaded through the center of a few pieces of blue tubular webbing to further-protect it from abrasion against the rock, and rebuilt the anchor like this:
That new anchor, in particular its fabric-parts, should be good for at least a year.  Later, when it eventually needs reconstructing, it could be done with two separate ~20ft cordelettes, which a climbing team would more-normally have.  That left-hand chockstone point is a little bit sharp, so consider padding or protecting the fabric material where it contacts the rock there.  Hopefully this helps keep the rappels on this very-heavily-used route safe and efficient for some time to come!