March 6, 2010: Ruth, baby!

Ruth Mountain, that is. A little neat glaciated summit, 2169 m/7115 ft above sea level, immediately northeast of Shuksan.

This winter has been a little mean to us snow-wise. The two previous weekends both resulted in a horrible skiing experience, and with no major storms since, all I wanted for this weekend was to tour at high elevations. So, I proposed heading to Paradise, and from there as high up as we can in one day.

Chris wasn't terribly excited to do something he had already done a zillion times including once with me. So, he proposed to do Ruth. I have seen Ruth before from Mount Baker (the ski resort) backcountry, and from there it looked like any other North Cascade summit does: too darn spectacular. To validate my assumptions, I checked the bible, and the bible had this to say:

Ruth Mountain is a magnificent touring objective. Of moderate height, its gleaming bulk is visible from much of the approach and its summit overlooks rugged Nooksack Cirque and the spectacular Pickett Range.

That sounded appealing. On the flip side, it looked like the approach is a three mile long traverse right at about the snow line. I hesitated, but figured that in the worst case, even if we have to boot down that whole thing, it's just 1000 feet vertical, which is borderline acceptable. Another consideration was that this three mile long traverse goes right in between two three mile long, opposite facing, huge avalanche slopes.

And that is exactly where the lack of recent major storms came in handy: if we ever do this thing, it better be in these conditions. The weather stayed consistently clear leading up to the weekend, and it promised to be a bluebird day with well consolidated snow at lower altitudes. Done deal.

I pulled into a park and ride in North Seattle at 3:50, and Chris was already there. Ken was supposed to show up at 4:00, but showed up at 4:45. He blamed this on an underage Kirkland cop who was hunting drunk party-goers and just couldn't find the will to ignore somebody blatantly driving a car at 3:50 on a Saturday morning. Since ski mountaineers typically drink after an outing, not before, the cop was out of luck, and had to spend some time making up a warning...at least, Ken didn't mind paying for our coffee as a penalty for being late.

Shortly after six, we got our coffee (with muffins!) at the 24-hour coffee joint off exit 255 in Bellingham, and proceeded East on 542. 13 miles past Glacier, we took a left onto a road named something along the lines of either "Hannegan Pass Road" or "Ruth Creek Road", depending on who you ask. The road was getting bumpier and bumpier as we were driving on it, and soon was blocked by a log and a couple boulders.

Using shovels, ice axes, muscles, smaller logs, ingenuity and 30 minutes worth of daylight, we were able to move the log out of the way. Chris then tried to maneuver his SUV around the boulders, but couldn't fit it in the hole that they were willing to provide us with.

Not to worry: after moving the log, we were feeling extremely confident about our collective ability to move unreasonably heavy objects. We then wasted some more daylight trying to make the boulder go away — to no avail. As we were getting desperate and ready to boot up that stretch, another SUV pulled in, and luckily, it was packed with four (or was that five?) Western students. Three minutes later, the boulder was out of the way, and we proceeded to the trailhead. We burnt some more daylight at the trailhead getting stuck and then digging and pushing the car. We were finally skinning up at 8:12 which was 1 hour and 12 minutes later than originally planned.

We followed the summer trail, which in retrospect seems to be a mistake. To be fair, Burgdorfer does say that this is the primary route, and we weren't the first party to take that route this year, as evidenced by remnants of skin tracks along our route all the way to the summit. That said, moving along this trail is not a pleasant experience, for these two reasons:

• there are two huge avalanche debris fields (and a few smaller ones) crossing which is a major pain, whether you are wearing skis or not;
• ski-walking on dirt interspersed with rocks, boulders and tree branches is awkward...and if you take this trail, you have to choose between that, postholing, or taking you skis on and off all the time.

So, the bottom line is this: Burgdorfer cautiously suggests an alternative route that goes roughly along the creek. We haven't really tried taking it, but we have every reason to believe that it would have saved us a few hours of time and quite a bit of frustration.

The good thing about crappy approaches is that once you get to consistent snow, you experience a little more of a nirvana than you otherwise would (as impossible as it may seem). By noon, we got out of the trees, gained some more vertical, and stopped for lunch at 5000 feet of elevation. The summit was in our plain view, it was snow all the way up, and there was not a single cloud anywhere on the bluest sky ever. Life was good.

Having fueled, we proceeded with the ascent. Generally following the summer trail and the established skin track, we went around the unnamed hill marked as 5930 on the topo map.

In retrospect, I am not sure why the trail/skin track go the way they do. It seems to be more efficient to just take a straighter line to the summit that would go west of that unnamed hill. There is a chance that whoever set the track perceived that aspect to be less avalanche-prone, I guess...that said, in my perception it was actually that rising traverse on the north side of the unnamed peak that I was somewhat uneasy about doing. Not that it looked likely to slide — but unlike elsewhere on the route, there was a certain amount of wind-blown snow on it, and there were a couple serious cornices on top of the ridge above the traverse. With a lot of sun baking them.

When the rising traverse was over, and we popped onto the pass east of the 5930 hill, we had no choice but to stop for a picture-taking session. In our view was the direct line to our objective: Ruth Mountain. Behind it were shining mighty glaciers of the rugged Shuksan. Throw in the Nooksack Ridge, Hannegan Peak with two zillion other snowy Cascade summits in every direction, and the approach was starting to look like a fair deal.

The life was turning from being good to being surreal. We were turning from being happy to being ecstatic.

The snow felt good. We knew we would at least be able to ski. 1000+ vertical feet to go, though.

The 3/4 of a mile-long traverse in the established skin track ensued.

Baker figured it could spare some of its magnificence on a day like that, and popped into our view.

Skins gliding smoothly, a few treeless peaks around, Shuksan and Baker in clear view, perfect snow, still plenty of oxygen in the air, bright sun and not a single cloud from Canada to Oregon — I experienced bliss bordering exaltation flying along that traverse.

A few switchbacks and six Clif Shot Bloks later, the true exaltation hit me: the summit! Chris and Ken arrived shortly, and we then took our time experiencing a magnificent North Cascade summit on a magnificent day.

Collectively, we probably took a hundred pictures and a dozen videos. Those who have experienced magnificent Cascade summits on magnificent days, though, know that a magnificent Cascade summit cannot be described with words, pictures, or videos: it can only be experienced.

With Glacier Peak, Shuksan, Baker and even Rainier in our view, you'd think it doesn't get any better. But herein lies the fundamental difference between ski mountaineering and boot mountaineering: it's not preparing for a long walk down or building a rappel anchor that a ski mountaineer does when he is ready to get off the summit. It is the expectation of the climax following the climax — multiple orgasms if you will — that makes us dream of these very moments.

My first two turns on the descent are very cautious, but the snow doesn't throw any surprises at me, so I get a little more aggressive. The snow still acts like it's supposed to. I realize it's not Union Peak or Yodelin that I am in, so I pick up some speed, drop my butt as far to the side as I can, and the boards still do what they are meant to do: turn. Magic. We end up skiing six reasonably long pitches of sweet relaxed three-dimensional floating arcs before we hit crust. I only got into the backcountry skiing this season, so the following statement might not mean much, but still: it certainly was the most consistent and driest snow that I have experienced in the Cascades.

On the way back, we actually tried following the creek for a while, encouraged by the frozen ski tracks that were going in the direction where we wanted them to go. When the tracks crossed the creek, though, we opted for the option with the best worst case scenario: the trail. Skinned up to it, and suffered it all the way back. Returned to the car after dark with our headlamps on at around 20:15 — making it a 12-hour trip. The view of the stars in the clear sky was totally worth it, though.

The trip ended up being 19 km/12 mile long, with 1538m/5045ft elevation gain. The overlay of our route on a topo map, along with the elevation profile is available here in metric, and here in imperial

To top it off, Chris has composed a cool video of our trip: