Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Travel from the Hannegan Pass TH to the base of Ruth is generally not so bad, engaging sections of icy side-hilling out of drainages excepted. The basin below the north side of Ruth is filled with some pretty large avy chunks, creating a hummocky, somewhat unpleasant surface to travel over. We skinned a decently steep gully to get to ridgeline, which showed signs of recent windloading, but the slab on top of the latest crust was both aspect dependent and well-bonded to the underlying crust. Snow quality on true north aspects was excellent from the summit to the basin. Thin (~15 cm), reactive wind slab on steep NW aspects
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- light
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Snowpack
Thin coverage below 4,000' in the Ruth Creek drainage with widespread surface hoar in open meadows. Areas with tree cover are very icy and have a much thinner snowpack. Higher on the mountain, wind effect was present on nearly all aspects and included sastrugi features at ridgelines, nonreactive wind slabs on solar aspects, and stubborn to reactive wind slabs on shaded and sheltered aspects (generally NW)
Avalanche
We triggered a couple very minor wind slabs in the bottom section of the main gully/couloir on the north side of Ruth