Mount Ellinor — Sunday, Dec. 30, 2018

Decided to do a day hike of Mt. Ellinor on Sunday. Snow starts on the road a ways below the lower trailhead. I was able to make it all the way to the upper trailhead in my stock 2004 Xterra in 4-Low without chains. I was the only one (that I know of) that drove up the upper trailhead. There are deep ruts in the snow from other cars that make it relatively easy to drive up if your vehicle has a high clearance. I was scraping a little bit but I have skid plates on the underside of my vehicle so I wasn't worried. I would recommend starting at the Lower Trailhead unless you have 4x4, high clearance, some confidence, and probably chains as an insurance policy although it is definitely doable.

I started on the trail at about 8:30 am. There are a couple inches of snow on the trail at the upper trailhead. The snow was icy until shortly after the winter/summer trail junction when you leave the trees. I put my snowshoes on when I broke out of the trees. There were no tracks in the snow from the start of the gully to the summit. However, I saw 10-15 people coming up on my way down so they kicked in plenty of steps. I was able to make it all the way to the summit in my snowshoes (although I regretted it at times in the steep chutes). Be careful of postholing through to the creek in the chutes, however. I was lucky to be wearing snowshoes so I didn't but looked like the groups behind me did. There were no signs of any major recent avalanches and avalanche conditions were fine on Sunday. I reached the summit at about 10:30 am and had it all to myself for almost two hours. I would not attempt this without some kind of traction device. I also would recommend an ice axe although I forgot to strap mine to my pack and accidentally left it in the car.

I began descending at about 12:30 pm and I switched to microspikes. The descent was sloppy to say the least. The snow was extremely soft and I was postholing knee deep the whole way down to the trees. There were probably 10-15 more people coming up the trail as I was heading down. I made it to my car at 1:30 pm.

On the way down the road, I saw that the lower trailhead was pretty full. All cars were AWD or 4x4 and had decent clearance. There were a lot of cars parked on pullouts along the road below the lower trailhead. A FWD vehicle with chains or studded tires could make it the lower trailhead assuming the ground clearance is high enough but it's probably safer not to. Getting stuck with no spot to turn around would suck!