Middle Tooth, West Face. A casual August ramble in the Sawtooth Ridge area, by Bill Sumner and me, turned up this interesting new route. Traveling light with no particular objective in mind, we walked up Blacksmith Creek, crossed to the west side of the ridge, and were pleasantly surprised to be at the base of this 600-foot wall. Steep jam-cracks led up the left center of the white granite for three hundred feet; there increasingly difficult free climbing forced us to pendulum on a small chock across a smooth section to another crack system near the wall’s southern edge. Three more moderately difficult and strenuous leads brought us to the summit at sundown. All chocks and runners (did it clean). NCCS III, F9, A1 (the pendulum).

Michael Heath