Granite Creek Trail to Granite Lakes, Thompson Lake via Granite Creek Trail — Monday, May. 5, 2025

While the primary goal for the day was Upper Granite Lake, I had time to try visiting Thompson Lake as well. The trail to Upper Granite Lake was in excellent shape with no snow and no blowdowns. On the trail from Granite Creek to Thompson Lake intermittent patchy snow started at 3,600' elevation and turned to constant and hard-packed snow (maybe 6-12" deep) from 3,800-4,100'. This wasn't difficult to navigate, though. The snow entirely disappeared once the trail reenters the forest at 4,100' and there was no snow all the way until the final steps on the descent to Thompson Lake. The trail from Granite Creek to the saddle on the ridge above Thompson was slightly brushy and could use a little upkeep; the (very steep!) trail from the saddle down to Thompson Lake had several large blowdowns that were passable but quite annoying. Given that Thompson is still frozen I got to 200 feet above the lake and decided to turn around rather than have more (again, very steep!) trail to climb back up. Upper Granite made for a much nicer lunch spot today.