[lovetowonder]

Ruby Mountain has been on my interest list for at least a decade. Sunday the stars finally aligned with a good forecast, a few days off work, and a friend who thought bushwhacking/scrambling straight up a mountain and back down again sounded like fun! Jordyn picked me up in Seattle Sunday night (after she hiked to Muir that day, mind you) and we drove to Colonial Creek campground. We had a leisurely start the next morning with the alarm going off at 0630 and heating hot water for oatmeal and tea. Soon we were driving the ~3 miles east to the turn-off parking across from the boulder field around MP 133.

From reading lots of NW ridge TRs I expected route finding to be more difficult than it was for us. We started on the left (east) edge of the boulder field on the highway and found it to be pretty simple from there: just go up! There are cliff bands to navigate but we never had to go very far to our right or left to find a way up through them.

I was humbled on this "hike" - it was more difficult than I expected. Yes, I knew the numbers (5500' in 3.5 miles) but apparently I had forgotten what sustained steep scrambling is like. We hit snow right around 4000'.

Both on and off the snow we frequently saw faint boot/crampon/snowshoe prints. I was a little surprised for a place that is so much of "choose your own adventure," it seems many feet on this route end up in similar places. Speaking of snowshoes, ours both got a free ride the entire day. The snow was mostly well consolidated; some places below the tree line it was a little more frozen than I'd prefer and above treeline it had a few inches of fresh snow/windblown snow on top. The weather had been perfect to this point - sunny and just cool enough so we didn't overheat while ascending. A beautiful PNW spring morning. As the trees started thinning and we caught glimpses of the mountain grandeur around us we noticed storm clouds to the north, east, and south. We could also finally see our objective! It's crazy how you can't see Ruby any lower on the route or from highway 20 because it's too steeply/directly above the route.

Somewhere around 5800' we stashed our snowshoes realizing we just weren't going to need them. Eventually we arrived at the famed (from previous TRs) viewpoint at 6300'. It is true - the views are amazing! Forbidden and neighbors to the south, Snowfield, Colonial, and even Baker to the west, the Pickets and Ross Lake to the NW/north, Jack Mtn to the northeast.

After a brief pause for pictures and food, we headed up the final 1000' of ridge line to the summit. We'd had continuous sunshine until this point but now the wind picked up and clouds began rolling in. We hadn't left the viewpoint for more than five minutes before we stopped to reconsider. There were dark storm clouds with thick sheets of precip to the south, east, and north and some were moving our direction. As the sunshine left, wind blew snow in our faces and snow started falling from the sky, we decided to retreat. We were definitely disappointed to miss the summit after all the effort it took to get to that point! But the mountain will be there another day and we didn't want to be on the exposed ridge in a storm (with no views, why go to all the trouble anyway?).

As we started our descent the storm came in and snowed on us for a while. Of course, 45 minutes later the clouds cleared up and there was sunshine again. But the rest of the afternoon clouds and precip continued to come and go.

We followed our same route through the snow and got a bit left of our ascent track once we left the snow. But it didn't really matter as the goal was to just go down and bear a bit west. The descent had a lot of type two fun with veggie belays, some down climbing on steep snow, and one or two [thankfully harmless] tumbles. We were worried we'd get cliffed out but although it was always steep, we were always able to find a way down through the cliff bands.

6pm arrived as we were finally stepping onto the exceedingly (wonderfully) flat asphalt of highway 20.

What a mountain! I have a renewed respect for the northwest ridge route. I certainly hope to see the summit views one of these days but I'll need to forget a little bit of the suffering first. Thanks to previous NWhikers Ruby TRs which helped me research for this trip. I found some consolation in Beckey's description of the NW ridge route being "a long day." And props to Jordyn for tagging Muir and Ruby on back to back days!

[mtn.climber]

Good to see another Lovetowonder post. Keep it up!

[iron]

you forgot hollywood's rule #1 of the mountains: 1. always summit oh well, it's a good spot to come back to.

[lovetowonder]

[iron]

actually, i think i got it wrong: 1. look good 2. be cool 3. always summit and remember, safety 4th.