Mountain-Climb-Monday

Yesterday, my friend Sam and I, and his brother Ted, snow-climbed Mt. Ellinor. I think this might have been my 6th time reaching the summit, but my first time with snow gear. Because snow blocked the roadway, we were not even able to get Ted's truck up to the lower trailhead, which made a 4-mile roundtrip hike into 9 miles. We climbed about 4,000 ft in elevation from the truck to the top.

In this picture you can see the 'chute' that we climbed to reach the summit - the steep path of snow in the center:

Our lunch break... and also the birds':
Sam and Ted ascending the chute:
Rainier, a couple hundred miles away:
This is a look down from the top of the chute. After reaching the summit, we slid down on our tails... since there was plenty of snow we slid down the entire chute. It had a bit of a rollercoaster feel to it - height, steepness, speed, trees and rocks that you definitely did not want to crash into...
The false-summit. We had to kick into some pretty slippery ice with each step. We didn't actually end up using snowshoes... and we didn't use crampons... just ice axes.
A clear view of Seattle. If you expand the picture you can probably see the Space Needle... it's the tiny little white tower on the left side that is much smaller than all the sky-scrapers.
South from the Summit:
North from the Summit: