March 25, 2018, Mt. Ellinor Mixed Bag

Went up to mt ellinor today for first time. Despite a 5:30 wake up in Seattle we weren't skinning until a little before 9. Parked car at about 2200', a little past where the road crosses big creek. About 45 minutes (1.5 miles) of road skinning brought us to the cutoff up the drainage to eventually meet up with the trail. pretty easy travel  through some spectacular second-growth forest brought us to the mouth of the chute fairly quickly. It was clear that the snow above treeline had received a fair amount of sun yesterday.

There was evidence of point releases from rocks as well as a small (4-5") crown and resulting debris from a slide on a due southerly aspect of the chute (see pics below). Didn't slide very far but gave us slight pause. We could see several other releases of small wind slabs further up on southeasterly aspects. Made it to the summit around 1. We were open to the idea of skiing north chute but there had been significant transport and a stiff wind slab on the ridge and entry point that scared us. Ended up skiing the chute one over to the east of the ascent route. Went down to about 5000' and then cut back into our ascent line. A odd breakable crust (solar?) up high and heavy snow below kept it from hero status. All in all great day!