The Tooth in Winter

Paul and I climbed the South Face of The Tooth 330ft 5.4 on a beautiful day last Saturday. Unlike mine and Ari's previous time, we were the only ones up there in a while, so got to break trail up the steep snow.

I won't go over the logistics of the climb since Ari already covered that in a previous post, but this time Paul and I splitboarded up to the base of the scramble approach in Great Scott Bowl, climbed in splitboard hardboots / mountaineering boots, and brought one ice tool each.

Climbing The Tooth (First Alpine Climb)

A rite of passage for a Seattle mountaineer.

Happy OutsideAriana Gerdis

There were a lot of other backcountry skiers out on the approach to Source Lake and in Great Scott Bowl heading for Pineapple Pass. It was a sunny and warm morning, especially since we didn't leave the trailhead until around 8:45am. I had wanted to try to take the Alpental chairlifts up to the Back Bowls and traverse across to Great Scott Bowl, but the Alpental gates were closed, so we had to skin.

We took the normal well-traveled skin track up to Source Lake, which we arrived at around 9:45am. Then we went up the most used track up the "Lower Great Scott" gully and adjacent trees up to the bowl, around 10:30am. The bowl looks so small, but it felt like it took forever to get to the top of the approach gully. We skinned up to almost level with Pineapple Pass, then transitioned to booting. We eventually did reach the top of that gully around 11:25am after questing up through untouched greater than hip deep Pacific powder and busting through a small cornice.

From there, we flipped our poles upside down and plunged them into firmer previously sunbaked and refrozen snow around the corner that Ari described in her previous post. We traversed down and over to the base of the proper approach scramble. We got to the base of the 5th class at noon sharp to beautiful views of Snoqualmie Pass and Mt. Rainier.

We left our splitboard gear at the base, and started up the technical rock in splitboard hardboots for me and mountaineering boots for Paul (which he splitboarded in). I brought:

• One Ice Tool
• Two sets of gloves
• Single set of cams from 0.3 to 2
• Two hexes (for fun)
• A set of offset nuts
• Our 60m dry-treated rope
• Some cord + stainless steel quicklinks
• Etc multipitch climbing gear (see other posts)

I lead all the pitches like I had in the fall, but I found the challenge of the snow, climbing in the splitboard boots, and taking slightly different variations kept it fun.

The climbing went smoothly, so we made it to the top at 3:45pm, at which point it had gotten cloudier.

On the descent made an intermediate anchor on a tree halfway down P3 to avoid down-scrambling the steep snow. Besides that one which we left, the other anchors were already equipped with cord and rap rings, and we made it to the base of the 5th class in 5 rappels without any issues. Arriving back to our stashed splitboarding gear at around 5:45pm.

We easily dug out the rap bolts at the top of the descent gully, loaded up our packs with our splitboard gear, and then I rapped first down to the midway rap bolts described in Ari's fall trip report. Since I thought I remembered where they were, and planning on doing some digging, I lead the way down. Unfortunately I didn't remember exactly how far down the 60m rope the midway bolts are, so I started digging with my hands and ice tool about 15ft from the ends of the rope. That didn't uncover the rock block I remembered, so I got out my avalanche shovel - still on rappel - and started digging down through the snow. I hit dirty ground and decided to keep following that down until I found the rock. I kept rapping slightly and digging out more snow until eventually I found a vertical flat piece of rock, and thinking I went too far down, I cleared that deeper into the gully. Getting stressed that I was nowhere near the anchor, and knowing that the sun was going down, I kept digging outward until I found them and yelled "YES!!!!!" in relief at 6:30pm.

For future reference, the anchor is very nearly at the end of a 30m rappel. With a 60m rope halved and stopper knots in the end, I was about 1-2 ft from the stopper knots when I clipped into the anchor. From there we rapped down, transitioned away our climbing gear and onto our splitboards, and rode down Great Scott Bowl and the Source Lake / Alpental Back Bowls exit all the way to the car at 7:45pm, making it an 11 hr trip. Overall this was a really fun and accessible winter alpine climb. The ice tools weren't needed for us, and splitboarding was much smoother than the fall talus hike.