The Tooth - August 28

Josh and I decided to climb The Tooth, so we met up at the Eastgate Park and Ride at 5am on Friday morning. We loaded up his gear and I headed up to the pass, which went very quickly. We arrived just before 6am and were on the trail by 6:15 or so.

The hike up the trail was pleasant and there was almost nobody around. Soon enough we were at the cliff bands above Source Lake, so we cut over just below them and up the gully, crossing the stream very high on the ridge. From there we headed up the main scree field toward Pineapple Pass. We reached the pass and scrambled around the backside to get to the start of the climb. I led all the pitches, as Josh isn't leading trad yet. The climbing was easy and there was solid pro almost anywhere you cared to look, not to mention rap slings everywhere to use as anchors. We were on the summit by 11:30 or so, and the bugs were crazy! We took a summit shot or two and headed down almost immediately. I think we did a total of 4 raps and were back at the start packing up our gear by 1pm.

The hike down the scree field was nothing less than treacherous. Hiking down after the snow has melted out is not a fun task. Near the end of the scree field, the inevitable happened... a rock shifted when I stepped on it and the one next to it fell right on my ankle. I was wearing approach shoes, so my ankle bone took a nice gash for my troubles. Without much else to do, I curse the rocks (damn rocks!) and kept going, careful not to repeat the action. We overshot where we were supposed to head down and ended up getting cliffed-out. We momentarily considered rapping down, but we couldn't see how far down it went, so we headed back up and quickly found where we were supposed to descend. From there, the pace picked up and soon we were back on the trail heading to the Alpental parking lot. We passed a few hikers on the way down, and got back at a few minutes after 3pm. An uneventful drive got us back to Eastgate, where I dropped Josh off. Another hour in Friday afternoon traffic and I was finally home... where a cold beer put an end to the trip.