Granite Peak - as a day hike

What a day!... After following the weather forecast for a while Saturday was shaping up to be a perfect day to try to summit Granite Peak. I was determined to make this trip happen as it is hard to have schedules and weather align like they did. Again I have to say thanks to this forum as not only did it give me the details on the BEST ROUTE BY FAR for Granite it helped me find someone crazy enough to attempt this trip with me. I really didnt want to hike solo in the night in grizzly country :).

Got a call from Doug in Boise on Thursday and quick plans were made to meet in Idaho Falls Friday afternoon to head to Cooke City, MT and begin our journey early the next day.

I met Doug as planned, we loaded up my Subaru and headed for the start of the trail as Bob and Splattski described in their excellent trip reports. The drive through Yellowstone was nice but since we weren't their to see buffalo, antelope, deer, etc it was a little annoying having to stop in the middle of the road and wait for people to get their wild animal pics... We finally arrived in Cooke City and grabbed a bite to eat and a few last minute supplies. I always like to check in with the wife before I get into the mtns and lose cell service, just so you all know Cooke City does not have cell service at all. It does however have a wifi hotspot at the visitors center (which was closed but the crowd in front using the hotspot kindly gave us the password “yellowstone” in case anyone ever needs it). With technology from Apple I was able to get a txt out to my wife. Now for the part the locals don’t tell you. If you drive up the Lulu Pass road on the way to the trailhead right at the first junction AT&T has full 4G coverageJ.

We arrived at the trailhead around 8:00 and were greeted with one of the coolest old mining towns I have ever seen. Instead of going straight to sleep we had to explore all the old cabins and abandoned mining equipment. Here are a few pics… its almost worth the trip just to see this stuff.

After finishing exploring the mine and getting our packs ready we decided sleeping in the Subaru aka “MotorRu” would be safer than sleeping on the ground in bear country. I must have done a great job at hydrating as I had to get up and pee twice in the short 6 hours we attempted to sleep… sorry Doug.

The alarm went off at 3 and we were on the trail with headlamps blazing around 3:30. There was a lot of talking between us during the beginning of the hike. Doug’s bear bell wasn’t making enough noise so I decided I would have to do it J. I blame the extra talking on my first and worst wrong turn of the day… while following a trail I missed a creek crossing and ended up walking a full 180 degrees without realizing it. This was one of the eeriest feelings I have ever had… we were headed south and I thought it was north! We were navigating with my iPhone but to save batteries I had it off in my pocket as the trail was pretty good the trail started getting worse and worse so I finally took out the phone and realized we had strayed. Looking at our location on the map I thought we needed to go left (but I thought north was south). We went left and the location indicator on my phone was showing we were going further from the trail. Something was wrong, had my phone lost our position,  was the map messed up?? Doug took out his GPS and verified north and south, we decided to trust my iphone map program again and bushwacked in bear country through lush grasses and thick forest back to the trail adding probably about a mile to our already long journey ahead of us.

Below is a picture of the map. The red line was our tracks the blue line was our intended path based on the map from Bob and Splattski. Notice the fun little loop just north of Lady of the Lake J

For those of you trying this hike in the dark with no moon and high efficient led headlamps here is a little advice (if you do this in the daylight it is way more obvious of a trail) :

1.       If you ever start following a trail that hasn’t been well travelled you are on the wrong path!

2.       Look at the map above the red arrow shows the first stream crossing. As soon as you get to the stream cross it,  DO NOT FOLLOW IT DOWNSTREAM J

3.       At the blue arrow there is a major trail junction, stay right (unless you want to go to Aero Lakes). When we were there someone had put trees across the path to the right as it isnt the main trail but is the one needed for Sky Top Creek.

4.       Just after the blue arrow is the 2^nd stream crossing. Again do not head right until AFTER you cross the steam and get back on a well-travelled trail. We bushwacked steep heavily forested trees trying to find a trail as my freehand of the map wasn’t accurate here.

Once back on the trail things went pretty smooth navigation wise… well maybe we had a few scenic detours and “short cuts” but all in all it wasn’t bad. A mile or so before Lone Elk Lake we had enough light to turn the headlamps off and start to enjoy the amazing scenery along the way. I couldn’t believe how green everything was and how much water is in the area. I knew from the map there would be a lot of lakes but was surprised with the vegetation.

Here is a picture of Sky Top Creek

I am not a photographer but I got extremely lucky with this picture. This is looking across Rough Lake at “The Spires” and peak 11379 with a perfect mirror image reflecting in the lake.

Here is a picture of Granite Peak from above Sky Top Lakes. This was the first good look we had of the mountain. It was hard to believe the top was only 2000ft higher than we were… I swear it looked much higher!

We started our final ascent around 10:15 and passed a party coming down after already summiting earlier. They said we had a group of 5 ahead of us and to watch out for falling rock. This is becoming a popular route as there were at least 15 or so people using it this day (and probably another 30+ lined up to do it tomorrow). Most had a printed map from the summitpost TR and Splattskis website J.  The directions were perfect and finding the SW Couloir (I still don’t know the correct pronunciation of that word…) was easy. Now the true fun begins, Doug may disagreeJ. I love scrambling and easy rock climbing and truly enjoyed my route to the top. Someone had put up fixed ropes and webbing in a few places along the way. It really isnt needed and I made it a point not to, besides I trust myself more than an unknown anchor and aged rope.

Here is Doug just below the first fixed rope… I may have the camera tilted as I don’t remember it looking that steep in person.

Tom and I must have similar taste in routes as I chose straight up the middle of this picture. There is an “easier” well cairned route to the right but I prefer solid rock over the loose stuff and had no problems.

Once on the ridge the route to the top has several cairns. I chose staying climbers right along the top, the exposure was a little spooky in a couple places but overall not too difficult climbing. I shared the summit with a few other climbers and had enjoyed my favorite summit lunch PB&J. It was 11:30 and we had been hiking for 8 hours, I felt surprisingly good but still wasn’t looking forward to the hike out.  

Here is a panorama from the summit (I finally found an easy way to resize pics J, use the “Export Picture  to Folder “function in Picasa)

Doug enjoyed the way down and we safely took our time. After checking the fixed rope and anchor I decided it would hold and would make a fun repel so we used it. Here is the picture Doug’s wife isn’t supposed to see, please don’t tell her.

Once down the mountain I kept a steady pace knowing I needed to be back to the car in time to make the 6 hour drive home. Need to keep the wife happy and get enough sleep to be able to make it to my early Sunday church meetings. I tried taking a couple shortcuts on the way back… some worked much better than others and probably ended up costing us time overall. One thing about me is I am sort of like a horse headed back to the trailer… Once I can “smell” the car I pick up the pace. At mile 20 I decided to run the flats and walk the hills back to the car. After a while I decided hiking in the dark makes the trail seem shorter as I didn’t realize the car was still over 5 miles away.   I arrived back to the car at 5:50… I had ran out of water about 2 miles before the car and couldn’t wait to get the cold chocolate milk in my cooler! It felt great to change into comfortable clothes and the crocs and I packed up the car and thought I would have a little time to take a quick power nap before Doug showed up. I was either too excited from the amazing day I just had or too sore from the endless rock hoping as there was no way I could sleep. It didn’t matter anyway as soon Doug came around the mining cabin. You could tell he was glad to be done. He had also run out of water and decided to tough it out to the car instead of pumping water from the lake.

What a day! 25.5 (although we are officially rounding up to 26.2) miles, 14 hours 20 mins car to car, 6781 total feet of elevation gain/loss, 4057 calories burned, new friendships made, many new stories to tell, no bear sightings, perfect weather, just amazing!! I highly recommend this trip to anyone able as it is definitely one of my best hikes to date.