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Trip Report    

Backcountry Ski/Snowboard - Mount Ruth (Mount Rainier)

Ultra fun 6k' backcountry ski day on the Interglacier!

Michael Nanney Michael Nanney
June 03, 2025
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • The road is now open all the way to the White River Campground, which is where we parked.  The trail to Glacier Basin is intermittent snow and dirt and we packed our skis from the trailhead to the Inter Fork creek/river crossing coming & going.  Continuous skinning once across the river.

Our crew of Mountaineers met at the White River Campground parking area at 7:00 and set off with skis on packs.  The trail is easy to follow even where covered with snow and the wooden bridges are either easy to step down to or are still covered with a meter of snow.

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The first challenge was finding a way across the Inter Fork creek, which with the recent snow and warm temps was more like a river.

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The group switched to skiing on the far bank and enjoyed a nice skin up the basin to the Inter Glacier and enjoyed two short breaks on the "usual" flat rock outcroppings in the middle of the glacier on the skin up.

Interglacier.jpg Our first objective was Steamboat Prow (9700') where we enjoyed front row seats of the Emmons Glacier and could easily make out the early season bootpack (and the visible challenges the Emmons route is going to have this season).  After a snack and ripping skins, we enjoyed a fun ski down to the upper rock outcropping in the Inter Glacier at 8200'

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From the outcropping we transitioned again to skin up to within a ~100' of Ruth's summit where we scrambled the rest of the way in ski boots.

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From Ruth's summit (8600') we enjoyed a fun ski along the north aspect of the northeast ridge from Ruth to Pt 6735 which is roughly the scramble route for Ruth before dropping back down to the Inter Fork crossing which was nontrivial after a full day of snow melt.

Super fun day out with a strong crew.  There was a little boot up the south bank of the Inter Fork to get back to the trail runners which pushed us up over 6,000' of gain for the day.  Congrats to PB for 100k' of vert this season!