Tried to run away from the post-holiday blues

Revy Day 3

Snow Day at Revy

Reveling in the Christmas Stoke 🎄

10 miles a runnin’

After the high of a successful trip to Silver Star, and with a clear forecast for Saturday morning, Alex, Sander, and I looked for our next objective together and settled on Ruth Mtn!

This was my fourth time summiting Ruth, my third time skiing from the summit, and by far my favorite of the three lines I’ve skied on it.

The trip started with what I feared was a bad omen—getting stuck in the snow less than half a mile from the trailhead. 45 minutes of digging and pushing got us back to solid road, also thank god we had tire chains for our car.

I had looked at satellite images of the trail and it had appeared there should be much, much less snow. Last year I waited to do this trail until after most of it had melted out and the recent satellite images made it look similarly melted out. It was not at all! This was actually fortuitous because it made the approach somehow easier. There were plenty of avy debris fields to cross but they were all easy to cross even in trailrunners. We kept trailrunners on until a couple hundred feet below Hannegan Pass when we switched to booting with crampons. We continued booting until we reached the base of Point 5930 and then switched to skinning and we were able to skin all the way to the summit.

Summit views were spectacular, as always. This is one of my favorite views in all of Washington, it’s one of the reasons I keep coming back!

A storm was forecasted to start to move in around 2pm so we planned for an early summit in case the storm came early. We arrived at 10:30 and hung out by ourselves, soaking in the views. (We only saw 2 other groups the whole day.)

At 11:30, with the storm front visibly moving our way, we decided to begin the ski down, even though we weren’t sure the snow had softened enough yet.

The top of the Ruth Glacier skied wonderfully. Given the ample snow cover on the face we decided to ski the fall line down to the valley floor instead of traversing far skier’s right like I did last year. It was so fun to ski Ruth this way!

Back in the valley, we put skins back on and meandered our way through sparse trees until we hit the trail via an avy debris field.

The last few miles were brutal, but they always are on this trail. 11.5 hours later and we were back at the car. Another great spring ski tour complete!

Top Sports

Sonja Saxe

Ruth Ski 3.0

9 Photos

2 Comments

Sign up to view more activities from Sonja Saxe

Tried to run away from the post-holiday blues

Revy Day 3

Snow Day at Revy

Reveling in the Christmas Stoke 🎄

10 miles a runnin’

Want to see more?

The #1 app for runners and cyclists

Sign Up for Free. Track your progress and reach goals. Join 100 million active people on Strava.

See More from Sonja