The Rubies are located just outside of Elko, Nevada, which started life as a railroad town, then turned to ranching and mining.  Perhaps because of the ranching, Elko has a strong Basque culture (sheep herders) which is reflected in the many Basque restaurants that specialize in “family style” dining, a euphemism for more meat than you could possibly eat. The Ruby Mountains were named after the garnets that were found in the area.

The Ruby Mountains from the one-horse town of Elko, Nevada.

While the mountains themselves are flawless, the man-made restrictions on them are not.  The range runs north/south for about 80 miles and is roughly ten miles wide, so it is long and skinny.  Most of the range is surrounded by private property, so access is severely restricted.  The main public trailhead, Lamoille Canyon, pierces the mountain range at about mid point on the west side and goes in roughly seven miles before hitting the north/south ridgeline which forms the Ruby Crest Trail which is the Wilderness boundary dividing line. As a multi-use area, snowmobiles, helicopters and ATV’s are allowed on the west side of the range, which in itself is fine.  The problem from a backcountry skier’s perspective is that because there is only one main trailhead, all of the use multi-use takes place in that concentrated area instead of being spread throughout the range.  Two-stroke is the language of choice in the Rubies and human powered activities are outnumbered by 10:1 from what I have seen.  I’ve had good luck bringing a rope and getting a tow in on the main road from the sledders, and if not, there is plenty of good skiing (including the super classic “Terminal Cancer”) within a short distance from the trailhead.

"Terminal Cancer" with a heli on top. This is about a ten minute skin from the main trailhead.

Noah going with the flow-ah in da Rubsters. Nice plumage.

There is something about the geology of the Rubies that make them very conducive to couloirs and the place is littered with them.

For more photos and comments, please see the Ruby photo gallery on the “PHOTOS” tab.

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Following a tip that there was an incredible unskied couloir right off the road, we drove from Salt Lake City to Elko, spent the night and easily found the couloir the next day. (We later found out it had not only been skied many times, but was named “Terminal Cancer.”) It had snowed a bit the day before, but was only about 6″ deep on the initial apron.  As we got higher into the chute, the walls from the side had sluffed all of their snow into the narrow gully such that it got deeper with every step.  About halfway up the chute we wallowing in thigh deep powder and kept thinking it couldn’t get any deeper, but it did.

As we had driven all the way just for this chute and were within 500′ of the top, we kept going, but it meant we had to break out the shovels and trench our way up the couloir.  At the point I took this photo, the snow was about 60″ deep and probably in the 5-6% density range. Pure fluff!

The skiing down was surreal.  We were worried about hitting the trench, but the snow sluffed and filled it all in so we didn’t even feel it.  The only time you could see anything was for a moment in between turns, then you’d sink back in, not just for a face-shot, but to be completely submerged.  We were so deep in the snow that we couldn’t go very fast, which led to a dreamy slo-mo descent down the orange-lichen lined walls of Terminal Cancer.

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