May 27, 2005, Inter Glacier / Mt Ruth

Last weekend it was snowing here according to reports; today it was probably 70 degrees at the top of Steamboat Prow. Took me quite a while to get up with all the postholing (snowboarding today, figured it would be the right tool for the job today and I think it was). Snow on trail last mile prior to Glacier Basin but not skinnable snow. Puzzled over the snapped off trees just a few yards from the Basin camps - if a big enough av happened to snap off trees like that where was the debris pile? It still smelled piney. No crevasses visible on Inter. Snow on Inter sometimes 2+ feet nonconsolidated soft over older icy/dirty. Skinning would have been nicer than postholing as evidenced by several skiers who made much better time up than I. From 9K up the snow was better, corn on a firmer base. Below it was very grabby, you really had to point it DOWN. Granted it was 3PM but with no overnight freeze on such a hot day not sure it would have been any better earlier. On the  plus side, no runnels, no suncups, minimal dirt, just the start of sastrugilike stuff high and today that was too soft to cause issues.
Made the extra effort to re-ascend to Ruth, but had already decided against trying the Dogleg because of fallen rocks and extensive av tracks, instead just headed down towards the ridge, which was untracked except for from some big herd of Mountaineers scramblers or something having booted it. Cliffed myself out stupidly, if you're up there you'll see tracks from my laughable dead end and resulting posthole back up.
Just observing, Corridor on the Emmons route looked  pretty skiable at least to some lateral crevasses around 12K, and given that the snow was getting good at 9K, maybe the snow at 12K would have been too. But just getting to the Prow left me pretty whupped today; sure hope that it's not going to shape up to be a summer where it's necessary to climb to 12K on Rainer just to find good snow.