Another Ruckel Afternoon :)

[chameleon]

I had a fantastic hike up Ruckel creek today, exploring the area a bit more. No huge discoveries, but the conditions made for a unique trip. I was very lucky that I made the decision to bring crampons and an ice axe. Without both, heading up to the upper falls today would have been extremely dangerous.
Even the hanging meadows were slick - water seeps out in the meadow and icycles had formed which are now covered by an inch of fresh powder throughout the meadow. Plus the rocky out-crops were ice encrusted.
The upper falls was beautiful today. Huge icycles have formed, and the pool at the bottom resembled a turquoise jacuzzi. The pool below the middle falls is even more beautiful - closely resembling a Yellowstone "hot pool" in its form and color - absolutely exquisite.
On my way down this time I decided to try the "Don Nelson" route to get down from the top of the middle falls - the gully off to the right side. I usually avoid this gully because of a huge, loose boulder - but today, from above it looked like the entire gully was a flat ice-path - all of the rocks covered by feet of ice. However, the "ledge" to get down into the gully looked very sketchy due to uneven ice covering it.
So I backed up and rappelled off a tree - 30 feet down into the gully. The gully was awesome. - a flat street of ice straight down to the pool below the middle falls, covered in an inch and a half of powder. If you fell without crampons, you would end up in the pool. It would have been next to impossible and very dangerous without crampons, but with...fairly easy. A few avalanches must have put that much snow in the gully.
A short ways below the middle falls there has been a large recent landslide covering the creek and slightly diverting it. Really cool stuff. I didn't get many photos today, but here are a few.
One of the photos is of a tree nearby the upper falls - spray has caused inches of water-ice to cover everything nearby. One of the photos is of the small Ruckel Creek falls along the road, and the other two are of the upper falls.

-Zach

[fettster]

Good job keeping safe. That's a lot of ice! Pretty soon you'll be able to start guiding with all your experiences there.

[pyles_94]

yes, very very nice!! love that first shot, the best i have seen from that falls... do you think it will still be there on sunday the first??

[greglief]

Hi Zach,

I admire your tenacity! It's tough enough getting to the "middle" and "upper" waterfalls during good conditions, let alone during winter. I also really like all of your photos, especially the first one!

Greg

[chameleon]

Thanks Greg. Yeah, I've been having fun with a few recent trips up Ruckel, including one this afternoon. I was hoping to do the whole stream, but due to the mush today and a late start I decided not to. Instead, I began at the top of the cedar slot and followed the stream all way down to the trailhead. Here are a few pics of this rarely seen piece of the stream... This is a 10 foot waterfall shortly below lower ruckel creek falls -

After that is a remarkable section - a boulder maze. Here is looking up into the beginning of the boulder maze from below. That pool gets deeper than it looks - about waist deep there right where it enters the little cave.

Soon after that you hit a short fallen log maze. Here is looking up into it from the bottom.

There are some neat rock formations on the stream bed as well.

There are lots of neat logs and rocks for cool shots as well.

And how can I post on this section of Ruckel without including at least one more photo of lower ruckel creek falls. Today I had a lot of fun rappelling directly down the falls (well, on the left hand side of it) and used my new helmet cam - can't wait to see how it turned out!