Granite Mountain - Winter — Friday, Feb. 22, 2013

Snoqualmie Region > Snoqualmie Pass

After the stormy weather on Friday, there was snow all the way down to the parking lot on Saturday morning. We almost couldn't drive all the way to the trailhead. The trail itself was pretty decent for the first couple of miles (packed snow), and we were able to hike on the snow without snow shoes or spikes. After a couple of miles the trail went near the avalanche gulley, which we stayed out of due to the high avalanche risk for the day. We were able to meander through the trees and reinforced some steps that were already kicked in by one party of 3 hikers that had gone up before us (everyone else seemed to be going to Pratt or turning around pretty early on the Granite trail). We climbed straight up for a while and then once the trees mostly thinned out the party before us turned around, at which point we were looking at very deep snow and no broken trail. We put on snow shoes at this point, which I usually don't need on Granite but were really needed on this particular day. We slogged up for about an hour and once we got up towards the ridge a lot of the snow was blown off and we switched out our snow shoes for crampons and ice axes. The wind was present but not ridiculous (maybe 20-30mph) and snow was coming at us sideways (I would not have wanted to be there w/out goggles). It was a real slog on this particular day, for sure. I don't think anyone else made the summit as we didn't see anyone else on the upper mountain.