Second time up to climb Mount Ruth and Steamboat Prow from White River Campground. I love this side of Rainier! This time instead of descending the ridge we ascended, we opted to follow all the Emmons Glacier climbers down the Inter Glacier and it was the longest glissade I've ever done! More on that later. In the words of my 23 yo son, "this is a lot harder than Mailbox". Yes, yes it is! Clouds threatened all day but never were a problem. We heard some thunder in the distance late afternoon.
Arrived at White River Campground at 8am on a Sunday. Still about 10-15 parking spots available. Hiked approx. 3.5 miles up to the Glacier Basin Camp. This is a good quality trail that is a pretty gentle grade for the most part. But so so never ending on the way down. Once at Glacier Basin Camp, we veered left to cross the Inter Fork river. Trip reports from June 11 indicate the crossing was difficult and had to remove boots. We found lots of opportunities to hop across boulders and picked one that seemed reasonable. It put us exactly on the next part of the trail. We hiked up steep dirt switchbacks to get to the ridge with Emmons Glacier on the left and going straight up to Ruth. The ridge is surprisingly snow free. At some point the actual trail veers to the right side of Ruth for the final approach. Here there was still a lot of snow remaining interspersed with rock fields. We picked a path and headed straight up. Poles and spikes or crampons used for this part. We continued alternating between snow and rocks to achieve the summit.
After a short break, we opted to continue on to Steamboat Prow at 9700' overlooking Camp Shurman, the launch point for Emmons Glacier summit attempts. There was only 1-2 patches of snow that required no traction, plus the one class 4ish down climb that neither of us had a problem with. After quick photos and listening to the active glaciers creaking and constant rock fall, we headed back down. As we were coming up and going down this section, we noticed a lot of climbers coming up to the ridge from Emmons for their final descent down Inter Glacier. About half skied down and the other half glissaded. We were really attracted to the glissade part reducing the need to trudge down the ridge for miles. So as we arrived at Camp Curtis where the climbers stopped to prep to go down Inter, we talked to a couple of guys who were finishing a C2C attempt. I was nervous about going down Inter Glacier without ropes and had not really researched it. But after talking to them we assessed the risk very low - it seems like this glacier is very similar to the Muir snowfield. Yes there are cracks that show up - though we saw none - but they are usually small. All the climbers we saw coming up were not roped either. So we went for it and it was an amazing glissade! Fast enough that we had to break hard the whole time as not to get out of control. And it took us all the way from the ridge down to where the Inter Fork river begins - cutting off probably 1.5 miles! All that remained was 4 miles of slogging on the trail back to the parking lot.
Stats: 12.6 miles, 5701' gain, 9:15 total time, 2:15 stop time. Ruth - 8690', Steamboat - 9760'
Gear: Waterproof boots, microspikes, poles, gaiters, ice axe for glissading. I also brought a garbage bag system for the glissade to save my gore tex shells from damage and it worked great.
Water sources: Lots of them up until the Inter Fork river. We drank some on the way up and filled up on the way down again as well. On a sunny day, you'll need a lot of water for this climb.
GPX track: https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=2228159
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