[TR] The Tooth and Pineapple pass - South face 07/14/2018

[NikiY]

Trip: The Tooth and Pineapple pass - South face

Trip Date: 07/14/2018

Trip Report:

My friend Summer texted me asking if I wanted to ski over the weekend. She's been trying to get turns all year and I've been going along for the ride. She has also spent the last few months talking about climbing the Tooth and skiing Pineapple pass and suggested that as an objective. I was pretty skeptical there would be snow but figured "why not?"

Arriving at the trailhead we prepared ourselves mentally for the onslaught of "are you really going skiing?" but mercifully we seemed to arrive after the early morning crowd but before the late morning crowd and the gasps of disbelief upon seeing a couple of people with skis were pretty minimal.

Are you really going skiing?

The hike and approach were fairly straight forward - there was minimal snow until we reached the bench ~700-800 feet below Pineapple pass. We put on skis and managed to skin most of the way up to the Tooth.

Eventually we needed to traverse over some talus and took the skis off. I ended up falling into a hole in the snow. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a photo while I was underneath the snow, but managed to get a photo of the hole once I extracted myself:

The snow ended at the notch and the approach gully to the Tooth was completely snow free:

We swapped leads and made it to the summit fairly quickly.

On the way down we met John (from Alaska) and Hank who were also descending. We ended up tying our ropes together so we could get down in two raps.

I'm a Disney Princess

It was time to ski!

This was

~650 vertical feet later we reached the end of the snow. This was the most work I have ever done for the least amount of skiing I've ever done. But Summer was super stoked to finally climb and ski the Tooth and honestly it was a very enjoyable day in the mountains!

Gear Notes:
Single rack from .3 to 3, nuts, tricams, skis

Approach Notes:
Continuous snow started ~700 feet below the notch. It's almost certainly no longer continuous.