Granite Mountain, Granite Mountain - Winter — Sunday, Dec. 26, 1999

Snoqualmie Region > Snoqualmie Pass

Awoken from a nightmare with Tontiah, the Aztec Sun God, I immediately got out of bed and headed for Granite Mountain. The fog was thick in Seattle, but around North Bend the day turned very clear, and now out of the winter holidaze I have been suffering I saw that there was virtually no snow in the foothills. Mt. Si looked dry as a bone. There was no trace of snow on the trail until arriving at the the avalanche chute, which looks like it saw quite a doozy a while back. The trail cutting back and forth between the chute and the forest edge, eventually it comes to a crosing over the chute (the normal start of the winter shortcut). The bushes have yet to be completely covered however, so I continued on the regular trail. Within 50', the squirmy end-tail of the avalanche led straight up to bare grass! With the snow so wore down and such a straight path ahead, I just meandered right up the middle of the grassy chute. As the grass ended in snow, I traversed to the ridge to the left, and soon found boulders leading almost all the way to the top, almost all snow free walking! It was cold and snow covered on top, but very sunny. Beautiful day!