Ruby Mountain 2021

After a winter of unsettled avalanche conditions, the prospect of a blue bird day with low danger on a North-facing slope was incredibly exciting. The motivation carried us through the 4:30am wakeup in Seattle and 5am city departure to drive Highway 20 to its winter gate at the Ross Dam Trailhead.

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Leaving the cars just after 8am, we skinned the road for about 0.7 miles before putting the skis on our backs, cutting through the woods, and catching the trail where it climbed up steeply near Happy Creek. There was a good boot pack through the woods and we ended up walking just shy of 2 miles from the car before switching back to skinning.

We started catching views to the North as we climbed higher and the trees thinned out. It was a beautiful day with a bunch of other parties on their way up. It was smooth sailing all the way to the top, where we arrived just shy of 5 hours after leaving the car. Views of the North Cascades were stellar and we thoroughly enjoyed our lunch while taking them in.

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The ski down was really fun with a few inches of light, newer snow on top of a supportive base with no signs of instability. We cut under the North face and headed down the fun terrain there into an open gully, then. back to our skin track. The ski out was uneventful, with really efficient and fun side-slipping through trees at the end on buttery corn snow. We made it to the road 8 hours after leaving the car and pushed ourselves without skins the last bit to the cars in another 15 minutes. It felt luxurious to finish with plenty of daylight—great way to kick off the “spring” season.

Table Mountain Circumnavigation and Herman Saddle

Owen and I drove separately from Seattle and enjoyed a wonderful socially-distant, but still highly social, ski tour on Christmas Eve. Nearly every bridge on I-5 North had a spinout crash on it in the early morning and the drive took a bit longer than normal, but was worth it as we crested the last few rises to the Mount Baker Ski Area and views of Shuksan looking regal in its winter coat.

We cruised up on the edge of the groomer to Artist Point in about 35 minutes. A quick traversing ski brought us to the flats below the South Face of Table Mountain. The wind which had been blowing up at Artist Point was nearly gone and we enjoyed the beach-like atmosphere and Shuksan views.

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About 1 hour and 15 minutes in, we were on the Southern shoulder of Table Mountain, checking out a cool igloo some folks had made there with an expansive view of Baker. A pretty icy and wind-crusty traversing ski brought us down to Mazama Lake. We quickly transitioned and crossed Iceberg Lake. The climb from the lake was pretty icy and required care skinning up without ski crampons.

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We weren’t ready for our day to be over at this point, so we decided to head up to Herman Saddle to see what it looked like on the North side. After a short ski down, we skinned up and were able to skin the whole way on sun-softened snow. Unfortunately, the North-facing slope down to the lake looked icy and windblown, so we called it good here and had lunch in the sun with a nice view of Baker.

Our turns down to Bagley Lake had their moments, but conditions certainly weren’t amazing. No bother—spending a day out of the house with a good friend I hadn’t seen in months and phenomenal views more than made up for it. Great day.

Birthday Tour and Copper Mountain

After a smashing success on Black Peak the day before, we were glad to see the forecast was holding for some kind of adventure before returning home on Sunday. It was clear that higher-elevation options were the right move since there was no snow down by Easy Pass and none down at Silver Star Creek either, so we opted for the Birthday Tour, expecting to tack on a summit along the way. Despite having climbed at the pass a lot, I’d never done the Birthday Tour, so it was a great option.

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We met up at 8:30am at the hairpin, left a car, and shuttled with the windows rolled down up to Blue Lake Trailhead. At 9am on the nose, we started skinning from the car. We made quick progress through the trees, into the open area below the spires, and up toward Blue Peak Col. In my infinite wisdom, I decided that, having skinned up to the col many times before, I should be able to do it again despite everyone else boot packing up. I made it up some tenuous, slippery sections to about 20 feet below the col where a steep, icy switchback awaited me. With a questionable left ski, I tried in vain a few times to get my right transition ski to stick. Even some bashing with my whippet couldn’t get it flat enough. As I tried one more time to chip out a platform, my left ski blew and I started sliding downhill. Thankfully, a quick whippet self arrest stopped me right next to the boot pack and I switched to booting, only bruising my ego. We were at the col a little after 11am.

From Blue Peak Col, the ski down Madison Avenue was PHENOMENAL—perfect corn at a really fun angle. We side-hilled a bit at the end to get as far over as possible and then did the detour up to Copper Pass, headed for Copper Mountain. We were able to skin until about 6,980’ where the ridge no longer held enough snow to go straight up, so we put the skis on our backs and traversed to the South a bit before cutting up a couloir to the ridge again at 7,380’ and switching back to skins. The cruise to the summit was triumphant, going three across and taking in the awesome views all by ourselves. We hit the top of Copper Mountain at 1:15pm and had a snack before heading back down to the Copper Creek drainage.

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We stayed skiers left of our ascent path on the way down, getting onto the warm South Face for a bit but the snow held together. A quick traverse got us back onto the ridge and then down to the drainage. We decided from here to head to the closest exit notch, which had seen plenty of traffic in the last two days. The ski down was great again for the first thousand feet or so, and then got a bit heavier as we traversed our way out to the car at 2:45pm. We ended up doing about 4,400’ and 7 miles. John had beers, beach chairs, and carpet squares in his truck and we sat for a bit in the sun enjoying the whole experience.

I’ve missed spring in the mountains a lot these past couple of months, so it was especially nice to be back out there for some Type-I fun with friends.