Mount Ellinor

On 11/16/2014, a group of seven Mountaineers day hikers completed a 12 mile round trip to Mt Ellinor from the Big Creek Campground Trailhead. On this cold and clear Sunday, we started on a temporary access trail off of FS Road #24 about 300 feet beyond the bridge over Big Creek due to campground closure. The temporary trail connects to the Big Creek Loop trail, which accesses the Connector Trail to the Lower Mt Ellinor trail. We left the access trail at Big Creek at 7:00 am and reached the summit at 12:00 pm after a 5024 feet climb in elevation. We were back are the trailhead at 4:00 pm. There were a couple of small patches of ice on the last part of the trail to the summit (no snow on the mountain). Views of Lake Cushman, Lower Hood Canal, and the Cascade Range as well as the Olympics were superb on the summit.