The Tooth/South Face

Trip Report

Ski and Climb the Tooth with Jason.  We met at my house around 7 and stopped by the Mountain Rescue Center (Seattle Mountain Rescue) on the way up.  We started skinning up around 8:30 and the temps were above freezing creating mostly soft snow on the trail. 

Since Alpental lifts were spinning we took the new winter up-track on the north side of the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River.  As we approached the waterfall, it was clear that the snow had melted out so much that there was no way to cross back across the river so we stayed on the north side all the way to the lake.  We took our skis off twice on the way to source lake, once to hand carry across a melted out stream

and once to boot up (skis on pack) some steep snow slopes adjacent to the waterfall to get into  the source lake basin.  We were both happy to have our Whippet Poles on the booter. The route continued around the west end of source lake and traversed up towards Great Scott Bowl. There was evidence of some old wet loose slides, but we didn't observe any instabilities on our tour.

We put ski crampons on before climbing through no fog bowl which required a fair number of switchbacks to get up the exposed slope and transitioned back to booting (skis under shoulder strap) to get up the bottom portion of the Hemlock Couloir. Once in Great Scott Bowl we skinned an upward traversing line up the west side of the bowl passing under the Fang, home of the excellent "Edge of Time" rock climb and eventually joined an existing skin track that headed up towards Pineapple Pass (skiers version).

 At about 5100' we left the skin track and headed west back towards the climbers notch and just prior to entering the notch we stopped and stashed our skis (left skins and ski crampons on to speed up our transition).  There was one other party on the route, traveling by snow shoes, and they passes us heading up to the notch while we were stashing our skis.

 We caught up with the snow shoer's at the top of the notch.  They stopped there for a longer break while we continued on down the south side of the notch which was partially melted out, but we quickly got back onto snow.  The small v gully had some snow in it but will likely melt out soon. 

There is still snow on the rest of the traverse towards that base of the climb, but most of the final rock scramble ascent to the base of the climb is snow free now.

Jason and I scrambled up in our ski boots and transitioned to rock shoes at the base of the climb.  We swung leads with Jason taking the first pitch.  This also meant that he got the third scramble pitch that was covered by a big snow patch.  He used rocks to create stepping stones across the snow section and also found a nice crack to put in a piece to protect the snow crossing.  I climbed the last pitch and while there was still snow on the summit we were able to meander on rock to avoid crossing it. 

After a short snack on the summit we got ready to head back down. Just as we started to rappel, it started to snow/rain lightly and continued to do so off and on throughout our descent to the bottom of the climb.  I read a report from Rob Busack describing an alternative bolted rappel route for the bottom two pitches and we decided to find this route.  We found it and the anchors are nice but both are small stances, very exposed, and so not good for a large party or for in-experienced climbers. One nice thing about this route is that it avoided the snow patch we had to walk across on the ascent.

This route is not traveled much and bottom two rappels were still covered with lichen and when wet they were very slippery. The second anchor chains are not directly below the first bolts/chains and so you have to either rappel towards the East and even if you do, you will likely need to climb a few feet up on a rib to reach the second anchor.  There are also some large clefts in the rock that look like they might be rope catchers (our rope was stuck temporarily and required some tugging to get it free).  Another nice thing about this descent route is that the last bolts are a little lower on the route so a 60m rope makes it all the way to the bottom of the base of the climb.

The alternate rappel route is not for everyone, but it does offer a nice relief valve if there are big crowds on the standard descent route for some teams.

 It had stopped raining but the rock was still wet when we got to the bottom of the climb so we transitioned back into ski boots for the scramble and ski descent. The scramble down was a little more exciting than usual due to climbing it in ski boots but it went fine and there was a good boot path back through the snow out to our skis.

 By the time we got back to our skis, our gear was dried out and we quickly clicked back into our skis and started out.  In order to get back into No Fog Bowl, we skied as high a traverse out as we could manage. 

It worked out well and we came in near the middle of the Hemlock couloir and side slipped the steep section (that we had booted up on the ascent) back into No Fog Bowl.

 The ski down No Fog Bowl was fun and the snow was pretty good which made for a quick descent back to Source Lake.  We followed the standard out track from Source Lake back to the Alpental parking lot. The trail was still snow covered but getting thin in several places and will likely melt down to dirt soon.  The track was not nearly as well defined as it typical, probably due to the lower than usual traffic up there this year.

 We reached the car around 4, and it was a fun day with some Ski Mountaineering and the Climbing route is in great shape right now.  

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