Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

June 19, 2025

2300m

North Cascades Highway, WA

“Molar Tooth” is a separate tower on the north ridge extension of Cutthroat Peak that looks particularly iconic from the north. This objective lacks an official name so I had no clue about anything of it when Adam made the suggestion. I had to search it up on peakbagger.com and came to the conclusion that it’s a mere sub-peak of Cutthroat Peak which I had climbed via the south buttress route back in 2022. This tower does boast over 100 m prominence, is decently obscured and requires some 4th class climbing (as per Fletcher/Eric Eames’ trip back in May) so I made the decision to join. Adam made the original plan with Matt Below whereas I was originally considering something else in the Skagit Valley with Erica. I convinced Erica to come along so we had a group of 4. Adam and I talked about the climbing strategies but we decided to bring everything in the vehicles and make the final decision at the trail-head.

To further complicate things this was a Thursday so I needed to be back in the evening for work. Adam and Matt wasn’t keen on car-camping, so the plan was set to meet at Rainy Pass trail-head at 8:30 am. I thought that was unnecessarily late given my weird work schedule but reluctantly agreed as this was their trip after all. Erica and I left home at around 9:30 pm and after a few boring but familiar hours of driving up the Highway 20 corridor we got to the trail-head at 1 am. The other party showed up earlier than expected so we hastily had breakfast and packed. We decided to bring one (Matt’s) 60-m half rope and a small rack of cams and nuts. Erica would bring mountaineering boots and crampons in case there’s still snow/ice in the south gully but most of us were confident about the dry conditions. The crampons were then served as “group gear” because if there’s one patch of snow/ice that could not be bypassed we needed to get at least one person across to set up a fixed line or belay from above. Matt and I decided to simply wear the trail-runners for the entire day but Adam was still more comfortable about his boots.

This was Adam’s suggestion so we made him leading the way up the “highway” of PCT and then the forested rib that Fletcher and Eric had used on their ascent. The online “beta” was scarce and without GPX tracks. There were two creek crossings on the trail that were barely doable without having to take the shoes off, and the bottom part of the bushwhacking was thicker than expected. The vegetation was also wet from the previous day’s precipitation. Higher up we encountered some dead-falls but otherwise it was cruise sailing to about 1830 m where Adam started to lead us traversing climber’s right into the open. There’s one gully to cross with lots of Christmas trees and krummholz that made for some nasty “BW4” bushwhacking. I swore to god that we would take a different way on the descent. On the other side of this messed up area we picked up a dry gully and used that to gain elevation quickly. The gully was very loose and still had some patches of snow, and the snow was extremely icy. Ascending the snow patch was next to impossible with the trail-runners so we had to deal with more loose rocks. We eventually made our way to the base of the cliff faces guarding the south side of “Molar Tooth” and then traversed diagonally to the entrance of the south gully.

According to Adam there are many routes on “Molar Tooth” but the south gully used in Fletcher/Eric’s trip was the only one we considered. In a group of 4 it made sense to take the easiest possible way and Eric’s trip report made us believe this was indeed the easiest route. The lower and middle part of this gully was far from pleasant with lots of ball bearing choss on down-sloping terrain. There wasn’t much scrambling involved but the upward progress was slow and tedious. A few of us ditched their respective trekking poles in various stages of this gully. I read about taking a different rappelling route in the other trip report so opted to carry my poles all the way to the summit to avoid the potential backtracking. The route wasn’t obvious but Adam remembered reading about a “chimney” in Fletcher’s write-up. We clearly spotted a squeeze chimney and on the other side of it we scrambled up some chossy 3rd/4th class ledges/ramps to the climber’s left, and that positioned ourselves not far from the summit. There are two contenders and we checked out both just to be 100% sure. The eastern one had a cairn but we could not find a register. Despite that we came prepared for technical climbing we didn’t even bother to don harness as the scrambling was rather “straightforward” in my opinion.

Due to the time constraint I proposed to Erica that we should descend soon and Erica agreed. The fastest way for us to get home was to down-climb what exactly we did on the way up, so that was the plan. Adam and Matt would linger on the summit for at least 45 more minutes to give Erica and I plenty of time to clear the rockfall zone. I’m not sure if they rappelled the pitch or not. The down-climbing was not bad but caution was required given the poor rock quality. It’s been a while since any of us had done any serious scrambling so we both felt sort of awkward in some spots. The rest of the descent in the south gully was quick but unpleasant. While traversing back towards the forested rib I led the way staying much higher than Adam’s route, and managed to avoid the worse of the bushwhacking. The route was still unpleasant overall but I was happy to not have to deal with that section of the krummholz. A while later we rejoined the PCT and then jogged back to the trail-head concluding the sub-4.5-hour round-trip time. My GPS was acting up on the ascent jumping back and forth so I trimmed part of the recordings. The GPX shared in this trip report is not for the entire day’s statistics. Erica and I then rushed home and earned ourselves enough time for a proper dinner before showing up at work. I unfortunately had to work to 10:40 pm to conclude the exhausting but satisfying day.