Continuing on a gently rising traverse to the west, we passed alongside several more cliff bands, and then entered what appeared to be a shallow gully heading directly upslope. Figuring that this was the broad gully mentioned in the trip reports, we started up it. The going was pretty decent, with a mostly open understory. And, according to my GPS, we were definitely headed towards the faint ridgeline upon which the Shepherd's Tooth was located.
After some significant elevation gain in the shallow gully, I decided to climb out of it on one side to see if I could now locate the Tooth by sight. Lo and behold, upon climbing up out of the gully, I could immediately see the tooth poking up just a few hundred yards to the north. We were close! It was also apparent now that we were in a different gully; this one was to the east of the Tooth. Still, it looked from here like this was a viable ascent route, so on we went.
I called for the others to follow, and we proceeded to ascend just to the right of the gully. The vegetation was quite low here, more like scrub, and we began to get excellent views back down to Cold Brook Pass, to Mount Marshall, and to Wallface. The weather had clouded in somewhat over the highest of peaks, but every so often a nice patch of blue and a strong bit of sun cheered things up.
The Reluctant Bushwhacker
We made good progress up the remaining bit of terrain to the base of the Tooth, although Ewart was running a bit low on energy and we had to take some more frequent breaks.
We ascended the south-eastern aspect of the Tooth. Because it was fairly steep, and because the low scrub and the bare rock were free of ice, we decided it would be best to do this bit without snowshoes. It wasn't long before we were standing on this great little secret sub-peak of the Adirondacks!
To be fair, the views from the Shepherd's Tooth are quite similar to those from Iroquois Peak, with a slight change in angle (and with no view of Algonquin Peak, of course). That's no bad thing, because Iroquois Peak boasts fantastic views, and it was the same here -- along with that little bit of special extra which comes from knowing you are standing on a spot that not many people bother to reach.
Iroquois' southern aspect
With a bit of a chill breeze blowing and time running on (it was after 1pm at this point), we decided not to linger too long on the Tooth. We re-donned our snowshoes and headed north, down into the little notch between the tooth and Iroquois proper. To my surprise, we ran into some fresh snowshoe tracks down here, heading in the downhill direction. They did not appear to go to the Shepherd's Tooth, but rather bypassed it and continued down into the shallow gully to the west of it. Someone deciding to tackle Iroquois and Marshall in a day, perhaps? Maybe Pin-pin....?
In any case, we followed the tracks upward, shortly reaching treeline again, and changed back into boots. From there, we headed up relatively ice-free alpine terrain to the summit of Iroquois, enjoying many fantastic views along the way. As a side note: there are several cairns marking the way all the way up to the summit, and I recalled reading that one time the most popular way to reach Marshall was to traverse down from Iroquois to Cold Brook pass, then on to Marshall. Perhaps these cairns were part of that route marking.
As we ascended, I took many pictures back down to the little nubbin of the Shepherd's Tooth.
Ewart is glad to be on rock
