Beautiful day on the mountain! Poles and crampons could be a good idea! My helmet fell out of my pack on the descent. Didn’t notice until I had gotten back to my car!... if anyone happens to see a grey camp helmet with a mrnp sticker on it HMU and I’ll buy you a drink as a thank you!

Tuesday's targets:  Steamboat Prow and Mt. Ruth in the northeast section of Mt Rainier NP.  I’ve only climbed this once before, on a July 2012 summit of the mountain, and things couldn’t be more different.  2012 must have been a good snow year because my memory is only of about a half hour walking along the meltwater river on a trail before cramponing-up on the edge of Interglacier and then climbing for a few hours to Steamboat Prow.

This time, not so much. (Differences may be due to the time of year—a month later—or 2019 is a real low snow year, or both).  I really would not recommend this climb and can’t quite imagine how summit teams are managing (if they are).  I haven't checked, but the season may be over for this route to the top.  Or teams with appropriate experience and equipment might get by just fine by knowing the route past the crevasses.

Initially things went well:  Hit the park entrance 85 minutes after leaving Seattle, and started hiking toward Glacier Basin CG at 7:30 (pkg lot 4,300 ft).  One hour to the Burroughs trail, and 1:20 total to Glacier Basin (about 5,900 ft).  The climbers’ trail was the same as always at the start.  But… instead of 30 minutes up the trail on the right/north side of the river, add another hour of nasty sand-pebbles-and-talus climbing up to about 7,200 feet (two steps up and a half step sliding down). I reached a flat area to crampon-up and then went on the slick, hard, filthy glacier surface.  

Caution advised. 

Seven years ago this had a yielding top of compacted snow (good for crampons on the way up and 2,000 foot glissades going down!) but now it’s clear hard ice alternating with pebbly, dirty top layer.  And the big basin seems to have maybe half the snow/ice it did in July 2012.  Plus tons of micro-streams of meltwater, which got worse as the sunny day lengthened.  Really not fun.  After about 90 minutes climbing from 7,200 to 8,400, (4:00 hours from TH), I hit a crevasse system that seems to cross the whole glacier.  From 3-5 feet wide and plenty deep.  Rope teams might get past it on the far left, but to the right when one crack ended it seems others started, all the way across.  I went a couple hundred feet left and right without any promising path popping up.  Without any major objective or anything to prove (and my wife’s yelling at me in the back of my mind) I turned around.  A sketchy down-hike (ice axe barely bit into the surface, but crampons did well), then at the bottom of the ice almost glissading on the unstable sand and pebble slopes back to Glacier Basin (passing a herd of a dozen goats).   

Beautiful day in the mountains, including a really helpful guy who assisted my search for my lost trekking pole (I stumbled on a root while running down and one pole went flying into the brush—this guy took 15 minutes out of his hike to help me search!  Thanks!  Maybe it'll turn up next spring!)  If you’re not a knuckle-head, it’s a good jogging trail from GB back to the parking lot--soft tread and not a lot of rocks/roots.  But otherwise, the whole day was a bit of a disappointment.  I might have been more comfortable with a second ice tool, and roped with a partner I'd probably have investigated a route more intently.  But as it is, this is not a route to be undertaken casually, at least not in its current condition.  

To clarify, the trail to Glacier Basin CG (3.1 miles from the White River CG lot) is in great shape and a lovely forest walk with some beautiful views of the summit. Even the climbers' trail for a half mile beyond that is fine, but after that, it gets rough.

We started our hike from White River parking lot around 9:30am. There was still a fair number of spots for such a nice Saturday. The first 2 or so miles up to the basin were relaxed with some big patches of snow. Once we got to the basin, we put on spikes and more layers. There was a fair number of groups headed up on skis or just climbing, but everyone is out doing different trips so you can’t rely on following anyone’s trail to get to Ruth. There was no discernible trail or boot pack up to Ruth. We relied on Gaia and some scouting to find the best path up and broke trail the whole way. There was plenty of active rock fall on the left side of the basin going up, but it’s easy to distance yourself from it. Traction and poles were a must but we didn’t feel we needed ice axes for ascending. The last bit to the summit is a  scramble on loose rock. We arrived at the top around 1pm as some clouds and wind promptly moved in. We probably would have climbed up to Steamboat Prow if this weather hadn’t moved in, as it’s pretty enticing from Ruth. The views that we were able to catch were stunning, especially of the mean crevasses on Emmons. After a leisurely lunch, we glissaded about 1000 ft down and hiked the rest of the way. Snow was great for glissading. There were a couple of shallow shoots but we made our own. No crevasses or any other hazards to worry about. Would be perfect to skin up and ski down as well. We were back at the car around 4:15pm. Overall great day trip to explore this area of Rainier.

I summit Steamboat Prow on Saturday via Inter Glacier route. My fifth time in 5 years. This year the snowpack melted sooner than the same week of last year but it’s still solid. I got to the end of Glacier Basin @9:15AM, put on crampons and started climbing. There were several teams of climbers already on the ascent route. Foot tracks had become stairs all I needed was the patience to put one foot in front of the other. My routine was 20 or so seconds of rest for every 100 steps. I had to admit it’s very dull but that’s how I topped it off @ 11:40AM.

While taking a lunch break at the Prow, I had a premium box seat to enjoy a rare giant slalom show, when a trio of skiers sped down the glacier slope of Mt Rainier to base camp then onto Emmons glacier, evading all the crevices in the spectacle. Later when I descended to Camp Curtis, the trio was just about to pack up and depart, one of them, still beaming with pride, told me it took only 30 minutes to ski down to base camp from the peak.

My return route was Mount Ruth. The ridge was bare and dusty so I put away my crampons but kept my ice axe handy. The joy ride was about to start.  Mount Ruth has the best glissade route around Rainier as far as I know. It’s long, wide, and steep but relatively safe. Today I figured ~70% of the descent route was still glissading-friendly. I could go aggressively with just one-shot ride instead I opted to make it a three sections to slide down to the glacier basin.

There were lots of hikers, skiers and climbers on Saturday. The main parking lot at White River Camp was already full before 7AM when I got there. Luckily one car just left so I took its space. I got back to my car @3:30PM. Total milage: 13.0.

I'm a little delayed with this trip report, but the hike up to Ruth and then Steamboat on Tuesday was amazing. This is definitely in my top 3 hikes in Washington. We headed to Mount Ruth first, then descended a little bit off of Ruth to head up to Steamboat Prow. The trail was snow covered after about 2 miles or so from the parking lot. We left the trail at this point and paralleled the river on the way up to Ruth. You will have to cross the river to cut over so be careful with that and make sure you pick a good spot. There are snow bridges so be very selective with where you plan to go. After crossing the river  I put on my mountaineering boots and we ascended the ridge and followed that up to Mount Ruth having beautiful views of Little Tahoma to the left, the Burroughs to the right and Mount Rainier right ahead. We could hear and see helicopters from this ridge all the way up to Ruth and then Steamboat. If you look closely in the second picture you can see one of the helicopters above Camp Shurman with a guy hanging off the end of the rope below it almost down to the camp. I read after the trip that they were up there trying to rescue the crew that was stranded up on Liberty Ridge. Anyways, after making it up to Steamboat we spent some time taking the views in and it was just amazing. The crevasses and the scale of the mountain from this view is tremendous. After lunch we packed up and jumped in the glissade chute down the Inter Glacier and we were able to descend around 3200' vertical feet via glissading. This was a solid day with solid views, I highly recommend this hike/scramble.