Hannegan Pass and Peak, Ruth Arm & Ruth Mountain — Tuesday, Jul. 15, 2003

North Cascades > Mount Baker Area

Well, the weather reports were contradicting, so we decided to head north and push our luck. The results were neither particularly good nor particularly bad. The hike up Ruth Creek started out warm in fairly decent weather (half clouds, half sun). Hannegan Pass was reached easily in about two hours. The way up from the pass to Ruth Arm was predictably crappy, going up a steep, mucky drainage for about 500 feet where it is easy to slip and get all muddy. After that moderate snow slopes are traversed to the left (runout over cliffs!) until the trail can be picked up for the section over to Ruth Arm itself. The arm is still partially under snow. There are decent campsites at the first clump of trees, just after that (exposed), and a somewhat crappy site that we used at the last clump of trees. Except for snow, none of the sites have water. We thought about heading up Ruth in the evening as the weather was looking fairly good, but were too lazy and we would regret it the next day. So we just settled down for the evening and ate half of our giant 3lb sandwitch and went to bed at about sunset after some really nice light on the peak. The next morning was fairly cloudy but not out and out terrible. Our plan was to do the whole Ruth-Icy traverse, but were not sure of that becuase of the weather. We decided to head up Ruth (which was easy to retreat off of) and see what it looked like from up there. So that is what we did, taking us about an hour from camp to the summit. This is an easy climb up a 25-30 degree ""glacier"" with only one out of the way crevasse showing. The weather actually seemed to be getting worse, so we decided not to continue the traverse. Also, the weather reports predicted a freezing level of about 12,500 feet today. Try 7000 feet. It was quite chilly in the wind, although not all that bad I suppose. The way back to camp was uneventful as the weather predictably improved. Once we reached Hannegan, we decided to head up Hannegan Peak just because we could. That was fun. Very little snow on the way. The way down was easy blah blah blah, hamburgers are good. All in all, Ruth is a great introductory climb in a great area with fantastic views of the Northeast Face of Shuksan and all the other surrounding peaks. I would definetely recommend this climb. Go now! before the black flies really come out.