Ellinor, a trip report in verse

Introduction

 For the sixth outing of the Boeing Employees' Alpine Society Basic Climbing Class (BOEALPS BCC) and the first overnight trip Team 7 attempted to climb Mounts Washington and Ellinor in the Olympics.  There are eleven outings in the three month long BCC staring in March and ending in June.  After the second outing the class is broken up into eight teams of twelve instructors and students.  For the various class trips the teams scatter to peaks all over Washington State.  As the lead instructor for Team 7 I picked Washington & Ellinor.  I had climbed The Brothers Traverse the year before and was eager to return to the Olympics.  Washington and Ellinor are adjacent peaks and a popular climb for the Basic Class.  BCC Team 4 was also climbing there that weekend.  The plan was that Team 4 would climb Ellinor's main summit & Ellinor's "A" Peak on Saturday, while Team 7 would climb Washington.  We would try and meet halfway and camp between the two summits.  Then on Sunday we would switch peaks.

 It was a nice idea, but the weather had other plans in store for us.  It was clear blue skies when we arrived at the trailhead Saturday morning.  Everyone was in high spirits, but we knew that we were in a race against time to reach the summit of Washington because snow was in the forecast that evening.  Despite the team's best efforts we had to turn back well below the summit of Washington, the blizzard hit earlier and harder than we expected.  Back at camp we constructed a big camp kitchen with high wind walls, but the wind-chill was too extreme and after dinner we all retreated to our tents.  It was hard to believe that it was the last weekend in April; it felt more like a winter storm.  We did not link up with Team 4 that night; because of the weather they ended up camping closer to Ellinor.  Huddled in my tent I read a copy of the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.  A fan of Lovecraft I had also recently been rereading a lot of Edgar Allen Poe's works, an author who was a big influence on Lovecraft.  I could not help but notice that the name Ellinor rhymed with Lenore, the woman for who's passing the narrator of Poe's The Raven is lamenting.

 The blizzard raged all night, buffeting our tents with gale-force gusts and the snow never stopped falling.  I had built a wind wall around my little one-man tent, but it only served to trap snow so that in the morning I found the three sides of my tent that were protected by the wind wall were buried in a couple feet of wind drift snow.  At least a foot or more of snow had fallen overnight so it was obvious that we were not going to summit Ellinor.  We broke down camp at first light and headed out.  We wanted to begin the descent in the morning cold before the warmth of the spring sun increased the avalanche danger.  During the night the freezing level had dropped to the trailhead so that the road and our cars, which had been snow-free the day before, were now covered with a half a foot of snow.  Everyone made it out safely and we did eventually link up with Team 4, not on the mountain as planned but instead at the Fish Tale Brew Pub in Olympia.  Over beers I kept turning over the Ellinor/Lenore rhyme which lead to my adaptation of The Raven as a Washington/Ellinor trip report.  I am sure Poe is spinning in his grave.

Ellinor

Links

O Brother, Where Art Thou?
www.summitpost.org/o-brother-where-art-thou/889752
My 2013 Brothers Traverse trip report

The Summitears weep triumphal tears on Mount Baker
www.summitpost.org/the-summitears-weep-triumphal-tears-on-mount-baker/906536
My 2014 BOEALPS Basic Climbing Class Team’s graduation climb.

Boeing Employees Alpine Society (BOEALPS)
boealps.org
Although it is a Boeing Club you do not have to be a Boeing Employee to take the Basic Climbing Class

The Fish Tale Brew Pub in Olympia
www.fishbrewing.com/brewpub

References

Olympic Mountain Rescue (Society). The Olympic Mountains: A climbing guide : alpine climbs, rock climbs, and high traverses (4th ed.).  Seattle. WA :, Mountaineers Books,, 2006

Smoot, Jeff. Climbing Washington's Mountains : summit hikes, scrambles, and climbs in Washington's Cascade and Olympic Mountain Range. Guilford Conn.: Falcon, 2002. Pgs. 369-372.

Poe, Edgar Allan.  Complete stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe.  New York : Doubleday, 1966.

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