Elevation Gain: 7,389m
Distance: 80km
Total Time: 12 days
Date: June 30th to July 12th, 2025
Andrea and I had just finished weathering a large storm on the south ridge of Peak 7400 and spent one more day waiting out the rain before a clearing in the weather would finally appear. We had big ambitions. Our goal was to summit Sharks Teeth Peaks, the high point of our traverse, and then get through the two cruxes of our trip. The first was a large glacier on the north side of Sharks Teeth. Satellite imagery made it look like a challenging affair and weren’t sure how difficult it would be to navigate. The second was a technical crux reported by Mark Grist on his traverse with Mike Buda after Peak 6600. This is the summit immediately after Sharks Teeth to the north. We had floated the idea of bypassing it all together and going straight up the glacier to “Elasmo Peak” (an unclimbed summit we’d visit later). However, in the brief breaks of cloud we did get the glacier did not look trivial to reach let alone travel on. Either way, we finally had a break in the weather and it was the day to finally find out what these cruxes would present.
We packed up camp, thankful to have a sunny day again and roped up for the traverse across the north side of Peak 7400. The crevasses were easy to avoid and we reached the col of Sharks Teeth in good time. Here it looked like an easy push up to the south ridge, but Andrea was suddenly not feeling well. We took some time see if the wave of illness would reside, but eventually we had to get moving and so we took it slow booting up the snow.
Before too long we reached the south ridge and the route up to the summit looked like an easy scramble. We ditched our packs and started up finding at most 3rd class terrain. The rock was surprisingly rotten, but easy enough to work around. The first tooth we climbed proved to be the tallest and directly north was the second tallest tooth. I thought it might offer a peek of the glacier below so I opted to scramble over while Andrea returned to the gear.
There was a bit more 3rd class on lichen covered rock and then I reached the secondary tooth. Unfortunately, the critical part of the glacier was obscured behind the steep roll in terrain and so I returned empty handed. Andrea and I gathered our things and traversed across the east face and then down the north spur a ways. We occasionally diverted towards rock ledges to get more views, but halfway down we dropped down to the glacier directly. Despite how messed up it looked from afar, we found a relatively easy way through on skiers right and then reached the top of the large icefall to the col.
Andrea spotted a line further right still so we traversed over and then transitioned onto rock and slabs. With a bit of 3rd class wet rock we reached the end of the difficulties and then had to make a quick dash across the hang fire zone from the ice fall. At last we reached the col and took a nice snack break next to some running water. The first crux was officially out of the way! Now for Peak 6600.
