Crappy ice instead of the Tooth

[slothrop]

Woke up at 4am Sunday and headed out to Alpental to check out the NE Slab of the Tooth. Got to Great Scott Bowl after snowshoeing through heavy snow in Source Lake Basin and dug a pit in the steepening snow below the east face. There was a 3-inch slab that slid very easily on a thin sugary layer, and the next foot and a half of the rutschblock disintegrated with one stomp. "Better safe than dead", so we turned around, chatting with some guys setting up for the ski rally. The route looked very snowy, with what looked like lots of ice to the left of the head of the rightmost snow gully.

Disappointed, but hungerin' for something to climb, we hiked back down to some short ice flows just south and above Source Lake. Not comfortable leading up a thick detached overhanging blue icicle, we tried to set up a top rope for another flow to the right. Descending a gully that turned into a cliff, I set up an anchor as a bird watched me from two feet away on the tree I was braced against. Like true bumblies, we rapped down the wrong gully. Bouldering on the cliff below, I fell and landed on my crampons Contemplating other ways to screw up, we looked over at the ice we intended to top rope and my partner suggested I lead it. Cool, no problem, my first lead on ice will be a 15-foot pair of steps ending in a walk-off along a rock ledge. I placed four screws in 15 feet and the third one unclipped itself I placed the fourth with one arm stuck up to the elbow in the space behind the ice, axe jammed against a thin rock flake. As Steve cleaned the "pitch", he tossed down the biner that had unclipped itself. It landed on the piled rope and clipped itself in The ice was rotten, about 3 inches away from the rock, and rotten.

We were entertained by the sounds of the racers being cheered on, a huge group of ski patrollers tearing up the glop, and the briefest glimpses of sunshine. All in all, a fun day.

[Colin]

So, the route looked like it had enough ice, but you backed off because you thought the avalanche danger was too high? Just want to get a better picture of what sort of shape the route is in.

[slothrop]

Yup, it looked like there was some thin ice over the lower left section of the slab, below the first trees. Above that and on the far right side of the slab, it was all snow. We backed off because we didn't want to trigger a slab on the snow slope or the gully. The route was probably over our heads, anyway. We had only gotten a short bit up the snow slope, didn't get too close a look at the ice. There are some photos here.