August 11, 2007, Mt Ruth/Icy Peaks

Joe and I got a late start on Friday - 9 pm from the Hannegan TH for our annual August Ruth pilgrimage.  Wanted to get up the trail aways to avoid getting up super early as we wanted to get over to Icy Peak also.  We got to the ridge camp (around 5,800) below Ruth at around 11:30 to find all the established sites taken.  Funny, Friday night they were all taken, but when we came out on Saturday they were all unoccupied.  Anyways, Heather is always a good companion.  Beautiful clear night with shooting stars galore.  Awoke to frost on our sleeping bags (hm, that summer went fast!) and got going around 6:30.  Really quick to the top of Ruth.  Decided to follow the ridge due S from top of Ruth instead of going through the pass W of Ruth.  This was slower, but more interesting.  From there we went down a narrow gulley from Hell.  Very steep and loose.  Discovered on the return a much easier and preferred gulley to the W.  From the bottom of the gulley we went E and back onto the S trending ridge, skirted Pt. 6099 to the E.  We crossed to the W side of the ridge and ascended the glacier in a southerly direction, trended SW from about 6,500 to gain a col on NW Icy's SW shoulder.  (Later discovered that had we gone SE from 6,500 ft we would have saved alot of time.)  From the col we traversed E to gain the saddle between Icy's NW and SE peaks.  Gaining the snowfield on the N side of the saddle proved a little tricky as the moat was deep and the rock was steep and we were sans rope.  From the top of the snowfield we traversed E and slightly downhill on the Spillway Glacier which was true to its name, spilling away in an incredible jumbled mess of iceblocks.  Getting off the snow to gain the rock on the SE peak was not difficult and the rock part went well.  We  were careful as there were alot of loose rocks of considerable size that could come off.  Beautiful views from up there from Baker and Shuksan to the Picket Range.  Some picture shooting and we were ready to carefully go back down to the snow.  Traversed back to the NW peak and climbed this one too, slightly easier than the SE peak.  A few good turns and a walking brought us back to the top of Ruth by a much preferred route.  Great turns all the way back to our bivy site.  There seems to be a lot more snow on Ruth's N side this year compared to the last few years of our August pilgrimage.  The long hike back to the car brought the usual stares and the "did you go skiing questions."  House meat at the North Fork capped off a great trip.