Trip Report
Basic Alpine Climb - The Tooth/South Face
Great company, beautiful weather, and a wonderful day outside!
Lauren Allen
- Fri, Jun 19, 2020
- Basic Alpine Climb - The Tooth/South Face
- The Tooth/South Face
- Climbing
- Successful
-
- Road suitable for all vehicles
-
We left the Alpental parking lot at 8 AM. FYI- the bathrooms are still closed due to COVID.
We took the summer route. We more or less followed this GPS track .
After the turnoff to the climber's trail, the path was snow covered. It was a little slippery but soft and easy to kick steps into. I had the only posthole of the day when attempting to step from snow onto a boulder. Luckily, Abby was able to help me out! Given how hot and sunny it was today, I think postholing will become a big issue for groups headed out this coming week.
At Pineapple Pass we opted to use ice axes but no crampons. It was still easy to kick steps.
I climbed the route in two pitches, after accidentally missing a belay tree. I think it is possible to do it in 2 pitches with a 60m rope, but only if you don't place too much gear and avoid rope drag.
Edel and I set a bomber handline anchor at the summit to guide our friends to the top where we enjoyed sunshine and snacks :)
After rapping down the route, we then collected our gear from the notch and used a double rope rappel to return to the snowfield.
It was such a beautiful day! There were lots of wildflowers including trilium and many others which I cannot identify. The team was wonderful. We made sure to wear our masks any time we were at belay stations or needed to be close to one another.
Car-to-car our time was about 10 hours for the four of us. Not the fastest, but I enjoyed every minute of it and am glad we didn't rush : )
Thank you everyone for making this climb possible! A huge thanks to Abby for stepping up to be our last minute leader! You're my hero!
Here is the beginning of the snowfield. I had my posthole close to the clump of boulders.
Laura on our fancy (and also unnecessary) hand line to the summit