Elephants' Graveyard

Overview

• Rated:  
• Type of trail:  Steep treed area beyond Space along the Inspiration ridge, just before No Name.
• The snow on this whole face is normally fantastic due to the prevailing winds sweeping snow from the frontside bowl up and over to this side of the ridge.  Entry is off Inspiration.  For exit, you need to decide how much poling and hiking you want to do, as the route straight down the pitch necessitates some uphill poling if you don't traverse out to the right high enough.  If you want to avoid this poling, keep an eye out for the point at which it seems there are a lot of lateral traverses happening.  You can either exit all the way over onto No Name, or with an uphill push, you can come out via Moe-Mentum.
• I've spent so much time in Elephant's that I had 277 pictures to whittle down to just these few!  Even in late season, there is usually great snow in Elephants'!
• There is some disagreement between what is Space and what is Elephants.  

Overviews of the area seen from East Rim Face:

You can see the tendency of tracks in Elephant's to veer over towards the left side of the picture toward No Name in order to save poling on exit.  What can't be seen is that there is a road at the very bottom, between Moe-Mentum and Elephants leading out of the area.  Unfortunately that road involves an uphill slope.  Exiting towards No Name higher up, or cutting through to Moe-Mentum via the small cut just about dead center of the picture is the easiest exit.

Better view of exits as seen from Whitey's:

Lower area, showing exit onto Moe-Mentum's alternate route.  This picture is taken from No Name.  There is an earlier cut as well, involving uphill poling, but not as much as exiting to No Name:

Entry from Inspiration:

Elephants' Graveyard is the trees ahead on the left.  Nice inversion day.

You can start right when the trees start, or delay your entry until almost at No Name:

Heading down Elephant's:

Looking up

:

Across the hill:

Tracks of those traversing out:

The road coming from the right corner is the road you'll be poling up if you don't traverse soon enough or find a cut through to Moe-Mentum.