Two more weekends to Rainier but I had the North Cascades on my mind and wanted to hit an easy peak to help get me in shape for Rainier and to see the spectacular views that I remembered from November when I first visited the national park. I hooked up with a fellow climber from Microsoft. The plan was to climb Ruth Mountain. We were planning on leaving Friday afternoon but the weather started turning so we delayed the trip a day. On Saturday, the weather was still questionable so we started contemplating a climb of “The Brothers” in the Olympic Range. We ultimately decided on Ruth Mountain because we needed more than one day to do the Brothers traverse; it was a bit too much to ask given the distance and elevation for one day, especially this early in the season.
We left Saturday afternoon for a camping spot that Robert had used a couple of years ago for a climb of the Nooksack Tower. We brought our bivy sacks and went to bed around 10, still well before it was completely dark. It took me a while to fall asleep.
I also woke up well before our 6am alarm since the sun came up around 4:45 am! Well, it was pleasant enough to lay there listening to the raging Nooksack creek. I remember thinking how glad I was that there was no river crossings for this climb. The creeks here in the Pacific Northwest are understandably very wide, deep, and cold and crossing them is frequently a requirement to a remote peak.
We got up and had a little breakfast then headed up to the Hannegan Pass trailhead. The road was closed before the trailhead though and we had a little extra hiking in front of us, but not much. Pretty soon, we were on the trail. The trail was easy to follow for quite a while though we were in snow from almost the very beginning.
As we continued higher up, the trail became more faint from time to time. Well, it was more like hikers couldn’t quite make up their mind what the best route was. We were well above Ruth Creek and a lot of the trail became an ascending traverse. One section in an old-growth forest was quite steep and a bit treacherous in retrospect. This was actually our crux of the climb, believe it or not. A while after though the trees became a bit more sparse and it was apparent we were near the pass. Hannegan Pass didn’t feel like much of a pass to me, it was more of a basin, but I didn’t spend much time studying the terrain. We put on some more sunscreen here and headed up to the ridge.
The guidebook says to go around the backhand side of a knob that was directly in front of us but it was obvious that a better route, at least this time of year, was to climb the moderately steep snow on the right hand side of the knob up to the ridge. We probably cut off a good chunk of time by doing this. Once on the ridge, the view of the North Cascades opened up.
We stopped frequently for photos and taking in the views. There were obviously others up here because there were tent sites dug and a couple of tents were still pitched. We also spotted some other climbers high up on the mountain.
The remainder of climb was basically a gentle snow slog up to the summit which lay beyond a black rock on the lefthand side of the ridge. I got into a groove and headed up and didn’t stop until I was on top.
It had been very warm lower on the slopes but it was windy on the summit and clouds had moved in which frequently obscured the sun. It was quite cold on my bare legs but I managed. I wandered down to the ridge and took pictures of Icy Peak which we were thinking of climbing.
It was probably a good thing that we didn’t attempt Icy Peak this day. Perhaps if we would have camped high we could have done it easily but I know we both would have been just shot if we would have climbed over to this mountain. Instead we just took it easy and took in the views which featured a spectacular frame of Mount Shuksan, just across the valley from us. The Price Glacier route looked quite scary and Himalayan.
We descended down the face leading directly down to the valley floor. The idea was that we would hike out along the creek and avoid the tedious traverses that we ascended on the way up. We were able to glissade most of the way down to the creek, always a great way to steal elevation back. The hike out was indeed much easier along the north side of the creek. We wisely didn’t cross back over to the south side until about 4/5ths of the way back. As soon as we did, the terrain became tougher, crowded with fallen trees and rocks but eventually got back on the trail.
This was a pretty cool intro to the North Cascades. Of course, Ruth Mountain at about 8-10 miles and 4200 feet of elevation is reputed to be an easy peak in this rugged range.
Icy Peak. It was tempting, but we headed back instead. I kinda wish we would have gone in hindsight, though I would have been a zombie hiking out.
