My take is to take a rope when going with a newbie whose skills are not known. I had a bad experience with a newbie where we didn't use enough caution to rope up on what we thought was moderate terrain. The newbie fell, injured a leg, and required rescue.
Ruth is steep enough that a newbie could take a slide (generally good runout, however). Depending upon the aspect, the newbie could slide a long way.
If you slog a rope, might as well slog skis along too. Much safer, funner, and faster.
story:
Several years ago, I climbed the S. Brother with a friend and his girlfriend, a newbie. He taught her to ice-axe arrest the day before, on a snow patch on the way up to camp.
At the top, there was some steep snow, just corning up in the mid-day sun. I arrogantly displayed the shoe-ski glissade technique after a few demonstration plunge steps. My friend was a little more patient and stuck with her. But we were not roped. Nor did we know how freaked she was.
After a few unsteady plunge steps, she plunged herself down the 40deg slopes. She almost ice-axe arrested before hitting a rock in the middle of the slope. The rock flipped her over to face down the hill and she screamed down the hill in an uncontrolled glissade. Fortunately, after zooming over a small cliff just below me, a large rock outcropping broke her fall and an ankle. If she hadn't hit the rocks, she might have skipped down the 1000+ft of snow slopes below us and over bigger climbs and onto bigger rocks.
We could have easily avoided this accident had we roped up with her for the descent, having recognized her limited abilities and limited confidence with descending snow (She was quite comfortable going up but not in the least going down). Instead, we cheated death and had a needless epic and rescue.
thoughts to consider,
Bill f