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Trip Report    

Ruth Mountain & Icy Peak Traverse

The low snow year made this a strenuous trip in a beautiful area. Both ruth and icy glacier are down to bare ice. The smoke from the forest fires affected visibility on Saturday and clear off for the most part on Sunday. We had no beta about the availability of water so we carried extra water on the approach. one of the most beautiful camp that gives you the true wilderness feel.

On the approach, while the description said bear left, we saw a clear path bearing right - right does not go - bear left.

The standard route up the left side of Ruth glacier is a maze with large crevasse openings. We opted to explore around the toe of the glacier to the right on the approach. it was a traverse on some movable rocks over smooth glacier carved rocks. we ascent aiming for the highest spot where the rock reached, then roped up with our crampons. a short 300ft ascent on glacier brought us to a notch. we coiled the rope and easily walked up a 30ft ramp to the southwest side, we were rewarded with a smoky view of Shuksan and Icy. we contemplated a scramble up ruth but it was past 6pm. We decided that we should go make camp and rest up for the next day. we were delighted to find that the campsite had running water.

day 2, we started moving at 6:30am. we left camp with helmets on, we stayed left of the gully and made quick work on the approach to the Icy glacier. The approach tested and solidified everyone’s rock scrambling skills as there was a lot of it. One of the team members was having trouble with bootfit and speed, we discussed and parked the member on a nice sunny flat spot so she has the view and is able to rest for a few hours. Icy glacier was bare ice and very broken up, we brought 3 Ice screws and placed one at various point of the ascent. we brought 3 pickets and placed 2. we mostly followed climber’s left of the glacier. At one spot we had to traverse off the glacier onto the ridge to get around an open crevasse. we made quick work up the Icy glacier and shed the glacier gear. We scrambled up the ridge, instead of the first prominent gully, well we did the second gully. it was steeper. we scrambled up to a point where we decided to fix a handline, I placed 2 nuts on lead and fixed the line. everyone prusik up and we were on a false summit. the last person up (co-leader) swing lead and set up another fix line to the horn where all the rappel slings are. everyone scrambled up from the rappel slings to the summit at 11a. we took a group selfie and a round of high fives, then made our way down. double rope rappel (2x 30M). we had lunch back where our glacier gear was waiting for us. We took skiier left of the glacier on our way down before meeting our boot tracks again on skier right, it was a bit more direct and we scouted it on the summit. Backtrack to camp and to the TH. we were back at the car at 7ish pm. that last 4 miles felt quite long.


helmet, hiking poles, standard glacier gear,

for our group of 6, we brought
3 ice screws, 3 pickets, 5 nuts, #1 cam, cordelette, 2x 30M glacier ropes.