Mount Ellinor — Friday, Dec. 19, 2025

Made it to the lower trailhead and parked there. The road was fine until then, but we didn’t want to try going to the upper trailhead. There was snow starting at the lower trailhead on the hike in. Passed another group once we reached the junction with the upper trailhead. They said they made it about half way up the chute on the winter route and turned around due to deep snow and wind. Once we started on the winter route, we put on crampons before it started to get steep. The snow was definitely deep, I post-holed several times and the snow went up to my hips/lower waist. Once we were around 2/3 up the chute, we hit some tricky sections. The snow was very soft and powdery so it would slip right off the rocks and we were left with trusting the slightly icy rock. It also posed an avalanche risk which made us turn around. It was snowing on and off the whole hike, but really picked up on our way down. We were happy with our decision and had a great day out in the snow. Happy trails :)