Skiing Mount Ellinor in Olympic National Forest

Описание: With the wet weather in the forecast for the cascades, we decided to take advantage of the rain shadow cast on the eastern Olympics. Wyatt had a buddy cancel on him, so I took the challenge of planning a trip with someone much more experienced than I am. Skiing this mountain looked feasible in terms of snow conditions. The biggest question marks were which decent route we would choose and how much snow coverage there was in the forest.

I met Wyatt in Seattle at 6 am and we started hiking around 9 with skis and boots on our backs. We didn't hit consistent snow until ~2.5 miles in. We put our skis on and started skinning but then quickly took them off again in exchange for crampons and ice axe. The boot up the winter chute was quite fun and an excellent workout. The views of Lake Cushman and Hood Canal become more superb as we ascended. We got to the top of the saddle and finished the short climb to the true summit, where we saw even more people.

I planned on finding the summer route and trying to descend that way to avoid the crowds of people in the winter chute. However, after some indecisiveness and questioning, we ended up just skiing down the winter chute. This involved lots of waiting for people to pass and skiing over the choppy boot back. However, it was great practice for me to get some steep and narrow turns in.

We got back to the forest and started hiking in our trail shoes again. This time we decided to ski the forest road between upper and lower trailheads for a more fun and quicker way to the car. This ended up being a questionable decision as there was patchy snow the entire way back. We ended up transitioning on and off skis 4 times before making it back to the car.

This trip wasn't perfect, but it was super valuable to me to go with someone more experienced than I am. I learned to move and transition more quickly and efficiently than I would if I were with other people. I tried contributing by doing a lot of the planning and by packing Wyatt some lunch that may or may not have been super enjoyable.

Thank you so much for watching and reading!