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March 31, Ruby Mountain - North Cascades

3/31/14
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Posted by bgombasy on 4/2/14 4:55am
After a few days of trying to drum up some sort of midweek ski partner, I managed to set up a TAY blind date.  After chatting with deciding who, what, when, where, how...we set off from Lynnwood at 530 for HWY 20.  Choosing to go at Ruby Mountain right there at the gate closure was something that I have in mind since I saw it on a return canoe voyage on Ross Lake a few years prior.  The weather window was there, if not a little warm.

Hitting the "trail" at about 830 or so, the gate had about 10 inches of snow left around it, with a plowed lane up to the Happy Creek TH.  I found myself doing something I never thought would be a thing...skinning on a boardwalk .  Quite nice along Happy Creek there up until the point it turned into icy, dicey trials skinning for the next 1800 feet to the first clearing around 3200ft.  After breaking into the first meadow we intended to follow the climbers left route up the mountain through the higher tree bands, but got a little carried away with the climbing and ended up high on the adjacent ridge line more or less cliffed out with adventure skinning being redefined every step of the way.

After bailing on that idea, we transitioned and skied back to the valley below where we were able to pick up on the obvious route we should have done.  Once on the right track, the snow went from decent to amazing, to more than amazing.  We were getting stoked, it being the first time up close to Ruby, this was becoming an amazing zone.

Bench after bench we finally made it to one heck of lunch spot and decided to feast and view some of the North Cascades finest views.  A few more benches and many feet later, we reached a turn around time of 330, about 600ft shy of the summit.  Had it not been for the trials adventure skinning down low and up the wrong ridge, we would have made it.  But we were not disappointed with the descent.  Little to no instability noticed except for the lingering wind slab on small isolated convexities.  Nothing but boot top condensed pow all the way from 6600 to around 3600 where is turned to crusty mashed potatos from the afternoon sun.  Once back in the trees, shaved ice on impenetrable rain crust. Good times.  Turned out to be good volcano season training, little bit of everything.

When all said on done, hitting the trail an hour earlier, not going the wrong way, and having more coconut water would have made for the successful summit bid.  Will certainly be coming back for more this season.  Skin track is in up high with a little snow forecasted for this weekend ish, next sun window should be great!  Have fun out there!

My first TAY blind date turned out great, we all figured out that we weren't showing up with Hellbents, dukes, and alpine boots with an aquafina bottle of water. Turned out to be one heck of a fun group, thanks guys!!!

Pictures: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzNpKYxpvWm-MEhZVFBKVy1FVlU&usp=sharing
What a great resource we have in TAY, to meet like minded folks.
Pretty dang nice tour, Huh? We were out there a week prior, and hit her pretty good too. 
A short vid of the day:
http://thesnowtroopers.com/2014/n-cascades-wa-ruby-mountain/



Did the tour on Wednesday and wondered why you stopped short of the summit … makes sense now.

The terrain is way more complex than the USGS map indicates but you made it to the first meadow (not shown on USGS maps) so theoretically you should have been fine. Taking the high road is not always better. One of my friend’s solution to route finding is always go up. Sometimes it is just not the right solution.

Glad you got up into some of that good snow.

author=shred link=topic=31347.msg131545#msg131545 date=1396493955]
What a great resource we have in TAY, to meet like minded folks.
Pretty dang nice tour, Huh? We were out there a week prior, and hit her pretty good too.   
A short vid of the day:
http://thesnowtroopers.com/2014/n-cascades-wa-ruby-mountain/




Nice edit!  Looks like a super fun day out.

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march-31-ruby-mountain-north-cascades
bgombasy
2014-04-02 11:55:25