September 24, 2011 - The Tooth

The route to the base as seen from the hiking trail turnoff

I had joined a mountaineers trip two weeks ago set up quickly to get some students enough climbs for graduation, but being rainy and generally miserable I hadn’t written it up or taken any pictures. This time around Nicole was in town and thinking that her cold might be on the way out we decided to try and get her up the climb during a break in the weather, or so we thought.

The weather was looking decent as we headed up from the trail but a light rain started as the views started to open higher up. As the weather began to clear we started along the traverse off the summer trail and over towards the climb up into Scott's Bowl. The snow bridge we had walked across without much thought two weeks prior looked a bit precarious, forcing us to walk below instead. Nicole’s lungs were really holding her back – turned out that cold was a flu, but she was a trooper and pushed on, knowing the climbing and descent would be the easy part.

Snowbridge... not so walkable anymore...

Crossing under the snow bridge and hugging the cliffs we started to climb up towards Scott’s Bowl, reaching it under mostly cloudy skies where we got passed by a quick group of two – I realized later it was Tyler Farrar - weird! The sun opened up shortly, but clouds were still thickening off to the West.

Nicole working her way up Scott's Bowl. More fun in the snow :)

The climbing was fairly straightforward and we arrived at the top fairly quickly, despite encountering a few other groups on the way up. We sat on the summit for a few minutes taking in the cloudy views that wouldn’t relent to show the nearby or faraway peaks.

Cloudy view from the summit

The descent was easy and we happily avoided the stuck ropes that had threatened to make the last climb longer. We were trying out our double ropes (which we used as twins because the route goes straight up anyway) and used them to do double rappels on the way down. Two rappels and luckily no stuck ropes and we were on our way down – hiking out in the afternoon light under a few fleeting raindrops.

Working our way down the small remaining snowfield...