Thursday, July 4, 2013

Mt. Ellinor -- Saturday, June 29

Lunch lookout, Mt. Ellinor

About a month ago, we went hiking with our friends Andrew and Wynne and their doggy in the Olympics and Andrew told us about the Mt. Ellinor trail, saying that it's a good dog hike and a bit tougher than the trail we did with them (Dry Creek).  So, when our friend Matt came to visit, we took the opportunity to give Mt. Ellinor a try.  


Matt up Mt. Ellinor
Matty is a friend of ours from Michigan.  I met his roommate, Andy, in SPH when I was getting my MPH, and Matty started playing in the Ann Arbor Ultimate leagues.  After he finished his PhD in chemistry, he got a job at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, MI and we didn't see him as often, but he still occasionally made it out to Ann Arbor to visit friends and play in hat tournaments, etc.  
Matt looking over the world

Matt decided that since he had his summer off from teaching, he'd do a gigantic road trip from Michigan to California and stop and visit friends, camp, run 200-mile long relay races... the usual.  So, he swung through WA to visit us, break in our brand new guest bed (our FIRST house guest!), and see the Olympics.  He spent Tuesday night with us, then hung around the Olympics until Friday evening, then joined us for a weekend sleepover and a day-hike at Mt. Ellinor.

The Mt Ellinor lower trailhead is about 1.5 hrs from Olympia, west of Hoodsport.  The trail is 3.2 miles to the summit.  Doesn't sound so bad, until you realize that it's 3.2 miles straight upward -- with a 3500' elevation gain, after starting at 2,600'.  So, we started hiking and our lungs immediately noticed that we weren't at sea level.  But it wasn't so bad.  I mean, it couldn't be so bad -- we were passing families with children and mothers with babies strapped to their backs who were descending as we were headed upward.  
Photo taken by Matt


The trail wound its way through the forest.  It was pretty steep, obviously, but had plenty of switch backs to attempt to make the gain easier.  My right calf was bothering me a bit as we were climbing, but I tried not to let it slow me down too much.  My main concern was setting a good pace because the boys let me go first.  

Max Dog, meanwhile, was having a fantastic time.  He was running up the trail, then running back to us and then taking off again.  He got a great workout.  We were a little worried a few times when there was a pretty steep drop-off next to the trail, but Max was a good doggy and didn't try to leap off the side of the mountain or anything.

Eventually, we reached the spot that the families must have all turned around: deep, deep snow fields up through some jagged rocky terrain.  So, once we got to a flat patch, we did what any normal kids would do: we had a mini-snowball fight in our shorts!
Throwing snowballs on a hot, summer day
(Photos by Matt)



After scaling a few snow fields and some steep, slippery run-off paths, we found a FANTASTIC spot for lunch.  It was a lookout point where we could lookout over what seemed like the entire Puget Sound.  Pictures cannot capture the incredible views we had!  We had a clear view of Mt. Rainer to the southeast and the Seattle Skyline over the Sound to the northeast.  We tried to locate the inlets and the lakes we knew, and the Hood Canal.  It was chilly enough up at this spot that we had to put on some extra clothes, but still so pleasant and beautiful that we enjoyed everything.  


Descending (Photo by Matt)
We had made it most of the way to the top (probably 2-2.5 miles up the trail), but there was still a lot of work to do in order to reach the summit.  We met some people who had just come from there and were carrying ice axes and hiking poles and realized that maybe, just maybe, we might want to wait a couple months for the snow to clear out a bit more before we actually hiked to the top.  We still had to worry about getting the dog down some of the rocky areas safely, which ended up being no big deal at all.  Max has no issue figuring out a safe and quick way through the slippery, rocky areas.  But, we decided to head on back down after lunch, since we had gotten what we wanted -- a beautiful hike with spectacular views.  

By the way, going down took a fraction of the time it took to ascend.  I think it took us 1 hr 15 minutes to reach our lunch spot and only about a half hour to make it down.  

We remembered to bring extra shoes to change into when we got back to the car, and towels to wipe the dog off, but we neglected to bring extra shirts to wear home so we could change out of our sweaty ones.  We're learning....  

We stopped in Hoodsport for some malts before heading back to Olympia.  When we arrived in Olympia, sweaty and dirty, we were all exhausted and crashed out a bit in the living room before even showering.  It was a great hike -- tough but doable for we humans, and perfect for our in-shape doggy.
Sleepy husband and dog, and an always sleepy kitty