Copper Mountain
Lightening Peaks
Smog?
Lower Trailhead Register
Peaceful lower forest
Upper trail head 12X zoom from near the summit
Below the meadow above the flats
Globe Mallow (?)
The shorn and the unshorn
Welcome Crew
Cuties
Mount Washington
I was hoping to start today’s hike early in the morning for three different reasons.
On my hiking days I normally prefer to wake up and get out of the house before anyone in my family is awake. I have an easier time focusing and staying relaxed if I can slip out the door. Also today I was going to go up Mount Ellinor and I wanted to beat the crowds and the heat. I don’t not normally go up Ellinor on the weekends or in the summer because I hate crowds, but I’ve not had the freedom to hike during the week for a few years now. As a result of not being able to hike during the week, I have avoided going up Ellinor since Sunday, July 29, 2007.
Unfortunately today, I was not able to slip out the door before my family got up. I slept in until 8am because I have not been sleeping well for weeks and I needed the rest. My husband got up while I was in the bath and he immediately started complaining about his job. He did make a cup of tea for me to try to warm me up for listening to his monologue. Too bad he did not put sugar in it and he did not give it to me. I had to get it out of the kitchen myself after it was already too cool to drink. His being up and distracting me with cold bitter tea was just enough to make me forget to put my lunch in my pack. I packed my lunch the night before but in my rush to get out of the house before my husband got too deeply into his monologue I forgot get it out of the fridge. But I did pack two headlamps (one with no batteries), two big pocket knives a large mirror and a comb. In addition to that bit of insanity I also did not eat breakfast in my rush to get out.
It was not until after I reached the Lower Ellinor Trailhead that I realized I had no lunch with me. If I wanted to summit Ellinor I would have to do it on almost zero calories. I had my ultra light stove and enough fixings for two cups of tea and that was going to have to do me. I had a hard time deciding what to do. My options included driving all the way back to Hoodsport to buy some overpriced junk food or going home without hiking or hiking a little ways with no food and then turning back or going for the summit with no food.
I decided to hike a little way and see how I felt. Maybe I would turn around at the little campsite that I think is called chute flats. On the way to chute flats I managed to yogi a granola bar off of a photographer so I went ahead and summited. I felt a bit weak on the way back down, but it was not as bad as I thought it would be.
The hike up the lower trail today was noisy because it is so close to the road and cars full of hikers kept roaring past. Most hikers start at the upper trail head and only have to hike 1.7 miles to reach the summit. I like to start at the lower trail head because I love the forest there and 1.7 miles one way does not feel like a hike to me. It is also beautiful and peaceful on the lower trail.
There were at least 20 goats on or near the summit. Every adult goat seemed to have a baby. It is funny how the baby goats are so cute while their parents are so ugly. I had to shake my trekking poles at goats twice because the goats were playing chicken with me. I won the games of chicken but the games made my pulse rate go up. Those goats have sharp looking horns but I guess my trekking poles looked even sharper to the goats then thier horns looked to me.
Just after I passed though the meadow two large rocks tumbled across the switch backs above and below me. If I had been 30 feet up or down the trail I might have been hit. That was really scary; it was not something that I had ever experienced before. Perhaps a goat kicked the rocks down. I would like to think it was a goat and not the two teenage boys who came down the trail next. Another hiker asked the boys if they had done it and they said they had not. These rocks literally could have killed someone.
When I was in the meadow on my way back down a goat above the trail was taking a dust bath and knocking small rocks down towards the trail.
The local view from the top was good. I could see Mount Olympus and other Olympic mountains but there was a haze or mist hanging in the air. I could only see the top of one of the Cascade volcanoes, everything else in the Cascades was blocked out by a dark, hazy, endless, cloud cover. I think it may have been smog.
The hike without food was not as bad as I thought it would be but the crowds were very annoying. When I am hungry I am easily annoyed by noises and smells. On the summit there was a group of jabbering and screaming young adults who were making plans for hiking up Mount Saint Helens. They jabbered non-stop about this and that. They were also eating food and constantly talking about how this was the best apple / ham sandwich they had ever eaten. Then one girl started screaming because she saw a dragon fly. Sigh...
My normal approach to this type of nuisance is to wait for it to go away so I can have to summit to myself for a bit. But this group was not going away anytime soon and I was getting hungrier by the minute, so I went back down the trail to try to get away from them. I was not the only person who was driven to leave the summit early today. I normally spend about an hour on the summit of Ellinor but today I only spent ½ hour up there. In spite of cutting my summit time short I did not succeed in getting away from the noisemaking youngsters. The noisy ones passed me in the middle of the big meadow but I thought that would be the end of them. Nope, I was wrong, they kept stopping and screaming. I did not get out of earshot of that group until I got all the way back down to chute flats.
I decided I would brew my last tea at chute flats and maybe get some peace but no luck. A group of three or four very loud middle aged adults arrived and blocked my view while talking very loudly, so I got up and left. One of the adults apologized for being “so loud” and I just smiled at him. I think he was expecting a more gracious response from me. But I was not feeling terribly gracious at that moment.
But before I got to the lower trail I passed a person who had just farted and was screaming to his group that he just had a colonic cleansing. Oh well, at least I got some peace on the lower trail, once I got on the lower trail I did not see, smell or hear anyone else until the end of my hike.
I did not stop to eat anything on the way home because I knew I could not deal with crowds or decision making. When I got home I devoured my lunch. I have been trying to lose weight and I hope I lost at least a pound today.
When I got home my family was gone and my house was almost as clean as it was when I left.
6.5 miles
3,200 feet elevation gain
Sometime in the next two days I have to go back to Grisdale hill and retrieve the donkey my toddler left of there during the dog emergency.
Snag near summit
Mount Rose
The summit
The mob on the summit
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