Ruby Mountain — Thursday, Mar. 30, 2023

Amazing day up on Ruby Mountain today. Our party of seven started at 6:18am this morning from an empty Ross Dam trailhead at the closure gate for the North Cascades Highway. The highway was snow free to this point. We walked the road  1.25 miles before we took a short spur trail that took us to the Happy Creek Mill trail. The Hwy 20 road walk was fairly melted out with a few sections of compact snow and ice. The trail was snow free at the start, but gradually became snow and ice covered. Most of us put on some sort of traction. At around 3600 ft, one of the members of our group had some leg issues and had to turn back, along with their friend. Five of us continued on.

Somewhere around 4600 ft, I had enough of the occasional post hole, and put on snowshoes. The rest of the group continued on for awhile, before they put on snowshoes, and we all wore them all the way to the summit. Some high clouds moved in while we were ascending, which kept the temperature cool, which in turn kept the snow fairly consolidated. This made the travel easier that if we were in full sunshine, and sloppy snow conditions. We stayed away from any avalanche terrain, and we did not see any overhanging cornices, that would cause us any concern.

The last 400 vertical feet up the the ridge near the summit is quite steep. This part took a little time as we had to kick in steps in the wind blown snow to avoid sliding backwards on every step. One on this ridge it was a fairly straightforward walk up to the summit.

The views on Ruby are just phenomenal. So many snow capped peaks of the North Cascades visible today from every direction. Maybe the best views around!!

On the way down the steep part off of the ridge we all put on crampons and took out our ice axes. Once the terrain leveled out, I put on my snowshoes, as the others left their crampons on, and just booted it down. Snow stayed fairly consolidated the whole way down, which was nice. 

We finished at 6:15pm. We had the whole mountain to ourselves, which was sweet!! Great group today!! My GPS had 10.5 miles with 5480 ft gain which included some minimal ups and downs getting back on the right route a couple of times

More Information on this Trip Report

• https://caltopo.com/m/AMD9A