Climb: Tooth-NE Slab

Date of Climb: 2/19/2006

Trip Report:
On Sunday, Tom Hemm, Sergio, and I
tried the NE Slab on Tooth.
WE started a little late (8 am
from parking lot). There was
hardly any ice on the route.
We placed 3 screws in total
all in one place for the anchor
at the top of pitch 1. It was
mostly thin crust over powder
on steep terrain (>= 55-60
degrees consistently for the
first two pitches with sections
of 70-75 degrees). The crux
section was pitch 2, which
would've been a solid WI3
if there were any ice. As
such, we could not get any
piece of pro in that pitch,
and ran it out till we reached
the tree above. About every
third pick was good .

We had two bad cluster fucks,
and wasted quite some time
undoing them. We got to the
ridge and did two pitches (got
to the col which Nelson talks
about), and realized that we
still had three more pitches
to go, and it was already 4 pm.
So, we decided to bail, and
rapped the way we came up.
It was one short rap followed
by four full (douple rope)
raps to get to the snowslope
which we downclimbed. We had
our headlamps out for the
last rap.

Another team of two started
up the route after us, but bailed
after the first pitch.

Overall, it was a fun trip.
Pro was marginal to non-existent
in the first two pitches, and no
ice to tell your momma about.

It was a bad day for batteries.
Both my camera battery and my car
battery died. Sergio might want
to post some pics.


Gear Notes:
1 picket
3 screws (used all of them at one place)
2 angles
a few small cams (upto 1 in)
double ropes
two tools

Approach Notes:
No need for floatation.

Nice report Bala. Sounds like you had some fun up there.

i like the poetry formatting of this epic

blank verse?

Mostly iambic trimeter Truncated Willy! (Shortened Shakespeare, not circumcision )

Yikes. I would not want to rap that route. Kinda sparse in the anchor department eh?

Glad you made it down, but it sure seems like it would have been easier to go to the top and then rap the south face or down one of the western gullies.

Rapping down the NE Slab was not bad at all. We just rapped
from tree to tree. In fact, someone had already set up
most of the anchors. We backed them up for the first two
(heavy) guys to go down. We sacrificed one oval biner for
the last rap.

It was the first time up the route for all of us, and
it looked like the ridge pitches would create a lot of
rope drag. We had observed the NE Slab route on the way
up and thought we should be able to use the trees without
much issues.

We were the first one on the route on Saturday 2/19. We made it to the top and rap down on South Side. Here is my trip report on NE Slab.
My partner and I climbed Tooth NE slab Saturday 2/19/06. We saw a few climbers on the route a weekend before when we were heading to climb Tooth South side. We had another week of cold weather, so I thought it would be a nice ice climbing.
We had 4 climbers at the trail head; however one person had his ski issues at the trail head. When we got to the base of climb, he and his partner decided to turn around. I lead the first pitch. I was hoping that I was able to put ice screws in, but that was a joke. I put one 13cm screws about 15 ft up from my belayer. The ice was very thin, and I was able to see the rock underneath of the ice layer. I tried to put another ice screw in, but it didn’t even go a half way. So I climbed close to the rock wall on the
right side, and hoping I can put rock pros in. We didn’t have many varieties of rock pros, so I was straggling to find a right crack. I finally got up to the place I could make my anchor on the rock to bring my partner up. On first pitch, I only put 3 pros on full rope length. The
second pitch started 10 ft below the place I was belaying, and the route went to left to the trees. It was the same quality of ice and snow. It not thick ice to put ice screws in, and snow is not deep enough to put pickets
in. My partner put only 2 pickets on entire pitch, and hoping that he was not going to fall. The third pitch, I went through the small trees and put a
few slings on them. When I got up on the ridge, I was in the sun. It was very warm to belay my partner up. My fingers and toes were back with me again. We got on the North ridge route from there it was easy climb.
However only one section, we had to go over a small overhung cornice that was a little difficult move we had to do. After that it was easy walk to the summit. When we got to the summit, we realized we only had one 60m rope
because our other party turned around at the base. So we did painful 4 raps on South side. And we hiked down to Pineapple pass and hiked down to our snowshoes in dusk. We hiked down with our headlamp on, got to our car at
7pm.
Overall, it was fun climb because we made it and nobody got hurt. But if someone asked me if I want to climb again that route, I would hesitate to answer yes.

Do you guys think it will be climbable into the weekend based on what you saw? I only have time for a quick day shot next weekend and was givin' it some thought.

There was not much ice to climb any ways. I was going to say
that otherwise the route should still be in the same (climbable)
"shape" into the weekend, but the forecasts are calling for
snow in the Pass today and tomorrow. Not sure if that'll
change things.

Posting pics per Bala's request...













also, curious what the feasibility of rapping in to S Basin, traversing over beneath Pineapple Pass and back over into Great Scott Bowl is. Briefly enterained the notion as an alternative to rapping the N-side, but decided against it on account of the unknown.

Nice pics!

Extremely nice pictures, Thank you. I somehow have missed climbing the Tooth in all these years of climbing in the Cascades and plan to do it in May this year. My partner is suggesting the South Face which Beckey says is class 4, but he says is probably low 5th class.