The Tooth- South Face, II, 5.4
Daniel’s idea:
After work, drive up to Snoqualmie Pass, hike in to the Tooth, climb it, sleep on the summit, rappel down the following morning and go into work.
Dang that sounded cool to me. That’s almost like a free weekend. We headed out around 4:30 or 5:00 on Wednesday, stopped for some food at Subway in North Bend (saving part of the sandwich for the summit), and continued up to Snoqualmie Pass. From the parking lot, we hiked up the trail on snow. Well, I hiked; Daniel brought his skis and skinned up. Now, it was way back in November on Sperry Peak when I was last on snow and that was a postholing Hell. This Snoqualmie Spring snow was perfect, well-consolidated, and sturdy. I think I punched through once, and only then up to the thigh of one leg. Pshaw.
We made quick time up the valley, passed an open slope, where beyond we turned leftward past a waterfall and made a steep ascending and curving climb to Great Scott Basin. Within approximately an hour and a half we were near the Tooth. The snow climb beyond the small tower which Michael and I dubbed “Baby Tooth” was straight forward. At the very end, however, we did encounter a descent bergeschrund that required careful negotiation to safely squeak up and through in order to reach the small pass. A few minutes later we were at the base of the Tooth.
http://www.vimeo.com/6811948I’d never led the Tooth before so Daniel gave me the first pitch. One long simul pitch later we were on the summit. The climb itself was good easy fun, solid the whole way, consisting of easy climbing with sprinkled 5.4ish cruxes here and there. The summit was surprisingly warm – mid to low 50’s, I suppose, with no wind. After enjoying the second half of our subway sandwiches and some evening photography, we bedded down on two good bivy ledges and stared up at the stars. Occasionally, I would turn my head slightly and look down on the cars travelling on I-90 far below.
I fell asleep fast and awoke sometime in the early morning hours to a bright three quarters moon hanging in the southern sky. Sometime later, at 5am I heard Daniel moving about. We lazed around and leisurely had a small breakfast and took more pictures and video.
We made one rappel off the summit and then decided to explore around the area. Daniel led back up looking around for the “Catwalk”. With no immediate pro available, we decided to just rappel all the way down and solo up “Baby Tooth” for some more photo opportunities.
Daniel skied out. I glissaded and plunge stepped my way out. We were back to work around 9:30.
The photos here were taken by Daniel.
