This Sunday Ryan and I made an attempt at climbing another of the New England 4000 footers. Mount Ellen is the thirs highest peak in Vermont and since the forcast was for 70's and sun we decided to give it a shot. Our plan was to take the Long Trail over Mt. Abraham which we had just climbed a few weeks ago and continue on the ridge over to Ellen and back. Sounds pretty simple and to get up Abraham was very easy. Unfortunately after that the trail was unbroken and still had 4 or more feet of snow on it that was so soft we sank up to our waist every few steps. We didn't bring our snowshoes or it would have been fine. Instead we got soaked and it slowed us down to about a mile an hour. After just a mile of that we decided that we had two choices. One was continue on and go down a different trail and end up 10 miles from our car, call Chris and hope he could pick us up and bring us to our back to our car at 8 at night or so or plan two was to turn around half way across the ridge and get back to our own car and home at a decent hour without inconveiniencing anyone else. Had the sun been out and the temperature been a little higher we would have gone with plan one. Since the forcast was all wrong and it was cold and cloudy all day we decided to save it for a better day and headed back to the car. Of course the sun came when we were almost finished to add insult to injury which livened our spirits a little bit. The Long Trail really is a beautiful well maintained trail and it was nice to do anothersection of it. If you'd like to see some pictures from this mess there's a few right here. 
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