Nearing Lake Colden, we headed right, angling for the eastern end of the Cold Brook Pass trail, which would take us up to the col between Iroquois and Marshall. I was slightly concerned about no one having had broken out the rarely-used Cold Brook Pass trail (and thereby making our journey a little harder), but in fact there were a few recent tracks.
Junction to Cold Brook Pass
The Cold Brook Pass trail was in decent shape, with little blowdown. It was surprisingly steep in a few spots in it's midsection, causing us all to work up a good sweat. It didn't take us long to approach the height of land (which is at about 3,900 feet). As we ascended, I kept my eye out for a good view of the slopes we would have to bushwhack. I wanted to mentally confirm and/or refine our route.
1/4K break on the Cold Brk Trail
I recalled that a few reports recommended a route that intersected the Cold Brook Pass trail somewhat east of it's highpoint, so as we approached the pass, we slowed down and paid careful attention to the terrain on the right. We scouted back and forth for a bit, continuing to almost the height of land in the pass, but it was apparent that the closer you got to the actual height-of-land, the steeper and cliffier the terrain on the north side became. And, at no point along here could you actually see the Shepherd's Tooth -- the steeper terrain down low hid it from our view. So, we retraced our steps several hundred yards (meters) back to the east and looked for the most promising ascent line. There were several lines that looked like they would go. I created a two-point route between our current spot and the estimated location of the Tooth, and locked that into my GPS.
We donned waterproof gear and mentally girded ourselves for the abuse-by-a-thousand-brushings!
The terrain soon became quite steep, and we encountered several short cliffs where we turned to the right, following a steep but ascending traverse underneath the steepest bits. When it was reasonably easy to do so, we clawed our way straight up some steep but forested sections until we gained some moderately-sloped ground. At that point we started to make our way back west, knowing that the accepted approach to the Tooth from below was via a broad gully that led down just from the west of the tooth. Overall, the density-level of the brush was not too bad -- many small patches of moderately dense bush, but with a larger amount of more open trees in between. So far, so good.
