I had thought that a 9:00 start was late enough to let somebody get ahead and break trail, but no such luck, not one other car at the trail head this morning! About an inch of powder softening the well beat in trail up to the Granite junction, then 2-3 inches after that. One or two switchbacks below the first gully crossing I put on my snowshoes and headed straight up thru the forest on the winter route. Slightly granular dry powder from the start, mid-shin to knee deep (on 'shoes!) with the occasional deeper drift. With the current avalanche conditions forecast in mind, I snaked from tree to tree as best I could. There definitely is a shear layer down there, but in this particular location there didn't seem to be any cohesive slabs forming yet. As usual for this route, by the time I reached the last 3 little trees, the wind had cleared the fresh snow out and I was on mostly firm crust, with bear grass stalks and exposed rocks in view ahead. I kept my 'shoes on for the crampon effect, but boots would work fine. Some patches are approaching ""crampons wanted"" condition, but it's not quite that hard as yet. Beautiful rime ice formations on all the rocks and on vegetation large and small. I used the ""classic"" route - straight up the ridge crest on the steep section, then switching to the left side of the upper ridge at the ""break"", with no problems. The summit cornice is forming up nicely - I'd say it's even with the deck of the lookout already. Clear blue sky and sunshine - what could be better for December 31st ! As I descended I met the only other person on Granite today as he was nearing the summit.

Hiked up to the base of the summit today. The parking lot had about 1 foot of snow and the first 1/2 mile was wet and muddy. At the junction of the lakes and Granite Peak trail, the snow started to accumulate. At about 1 mile, snow shoes were necessary. The open slides were very difficult as the snow was deep and a lot of trees bent over with a lot of snow. The wind picked up and the snow turned back to freezing rain at about 1000 feet below the summit. There was no view from the top as the clouds and rain were pretty nasty. This would be a great winter workout if it was a great dry day.

As I started to write this I realized that by tomorrow it will most likely be totally irrevelant. Oh well. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! Me and Zach went up there to stretch our legs a bit this morning. No intentions of going to the summit due to time constraints. There is snow at the trailhead. It wasn't too tramped down or icy so I never bothered with the YakTrax. At the first gully there were some foot prints going up the winter route but there's still a lot of brush sticking out and I wasn't in the mood for it so we wandered around the summer trail for awhile. No one else had been there lately so Zach was doing a great job of breaking trail. Actually the snow was really light, about 6-8 inches deep so snowshoes weren't needed either. We stopped for some hot cocoa and biscuits just as the sun decided to shine. The temperature in the woods had been about 20 degrees and out in the sun it was 40....nice! As we turned back the wind was really picking up and I could see to the west it was getting really dark....ooooh, here comes the storm! As I said before, I think all this will change by tomorrow!

I've wanted to go up Granite in the winter ever since seeing a photo of the rime-ice covered lookout a few years ago. Finally I did it! I received some route and condition info the night before that cast my plan in doubt, but I decided to head to the trailhead anyway and if things looked bad I'd follow in Sadie's steps up to Pratt Mtn instead. I arrived at the trailhead fairly early to find a very stiff wind blowing and freezing my face. Not a good sign, so I loaded up more or less all the winter clothes I own, crampons, ice-axe, and snowshoes and set out. My plan was to head up the trail and hope the wind would die down. Amazingly it did! When I reached the Granite junction it was dead calm. I'd bummed along with two younger climbers and a retired guy named Jim, who turned out to be a great companion for the trip. Something about the name ""Jim"" that must dispose people to be seriously into the outdoors, go figure. Soon we popped out along side the avalanche chute and could see our ascent route. There was a good set of steps kicked in all the way up! Less encouraging there was also a fairly significant amount of frozen blood on the snow here. We ascended up beside the chute, taking care to stay as close to the trees as possible. The chute was filled with debris and I think I could see up higher where cheakamus hit the slab avalanche. We kept going up along behind the cornice, expecting to rise over it higher up and get blasted by an icy wind - not so! We reached the start of the exposed rocks to find sun and only a calm breeze. I'd doubled up with my thickest base layers and found myself wishing I'd worn less! Jim actually went with short sleeves and no gloves from here on up. On the right side of the rocks the snow was softening in the sun with a nice crust that the crampons bit into handily. To the left it was fairly icy but my steel crampons still punched through without much trouble. I stayed on the snow as much as possible, but had to go onto the ice for a short bit. Up above me Jim took a short slip and cut his knuckle on the ice. We pushed up over a little rise and found ourselves out of the surface ice, but in the middle of some spectacular rime-coated trees. We slowed our ascent here to take alot of photos with the lookout now in sight. The tower itself was still coated in rime, with the ice on the west side protruding off around six inches. Plenty of icicles all over the place and encasing the stairs. We dropped down a bit onto the ridge overlooking the summer route to get a photo of the monster cornice on the east side of the mountain. Up at the top another one was curling up high. I was expecting to be up at the top in bitter cold with nasty winds, wanting to beat a hasty retreat back down. It turned out as one heck of a nice bluebird day! Only a slight breeze, warm sun, and spectacular views and cloud formations. We stayed quite a while taking lots of photos and watching some skiers head down. Another set of prints were either ascending or descending via the ridge to West Granite, and the bowl between the two peaks was filled with ski tracks. Eventually we started down, which was more difficult than the ascent. We picked our way down through the rocks to stay off the ice, in a few places venturing out onto it to get around some bigger rocks. The snow had softened quite a bit in the bright sun but was very inconsistent. We could go ten feet on great plunge-stepping stuff, then hit a hard patch, then back to soft stuff. My crampons were also starting to ball up, making the going slow. I did manage to fall on my butt a few times, arresting just to make sure my axe would bite. It did. Once we were off the steepest bit we ditched the crampons and worked our way slowly down the softer snow. Beyond the end of the rocks we did a very slow glissade - better than just falling down randomly. I only let myself slide about fifty feet, then stop, repeat, until were were in the trees again. I put my crampons back on here, and Jim his YakTrax. I wished I'd remembered to bring mine. Back at the Wilderness boundary the other pair of climbers we encountered had stashed their snowshoes against the tree. Some nice looking wooden ones too. As we poked along the wind came back strong - glad we got down when we did! What a great trip! More trip photos at http://www.pbase.com/billcat/granitemountain2

Decided it was time to do this winter's first ""lap"" up Granite Mtn, and Sunday looked like decent conditions. I met C. at Eastgate and we headed out I-90. Some severe buffeting on the way seemed to promise a classic day on the open SW ridge. No other cars at the parking lot when we got there, plus still heavy winds and a very crisp temperature had us wondering if ""they"" knew something we didn't. We loaded up and headed out under a mostly clear sky. The trail was a perfect, two-snowshoe wide trough, firm but not yet icy and ideal for boots. We made excellent time with only one duck-under blow-down and the usual assortment of snow-bowed trees and brush. The ""real"" winter route - the one that breaks up/left into the forest before the first avalanche gully - isn't really in yet. Instead, the beaten track heads up the center of the gully above the trail crossing, then works up onto the climber's-left side of the gully. After studying the snow conditions on the upper face we felt comfortable taking that route, but another good dump of snow will bring on some serious avalanche hazard. When we broke left over the gully-edge and into the trees, we finally hit deep enough wind-drifted snow to put on the snowshoes. There was a bit of knee deep step kicking, but it didn't last long. As we climbed past the last trees we hit near perfect neve snow conditions and the 'shoes went back onto the packs. It was quite windy on the lower ridge, but as we climbed, the wind diminished and the air temperature seemed to warm up (more sunshine helped, of course). By the time we crossed over to the left side of the ridge at the snag-bench, we were in near-calm conditions! Quite a change from the usual wind-blast across that ridge. Excellent bootable snow conditions all the way, too, with only a couple of harder patches and a little ice in the rocks. Once on top, the sunny and near windless conditions were so nice that we spent nearly an hour relaxing and enjoying the exceptionally clear views. Adams to Baker, Stuart to the Olympics, it was some of the clearest visibility I've experienced up there - when we arrived, at least. By the time we decided to head down, there was a lot of dark haze starting to obscure the distant features. Not coming in fast enough to bother us, though, and we started jogging down the ridge. Without good glissade pants and with excellent footing we had decided to walk down. However, on crossing back to the gully side of the ridge (skier's left) we spotted a glissade trough running down the lower ridge, over the lip into the bowl, and all the way down into the lower gully. Just couldn't resist that, so swoosh we went ! All the way back down to where we had left the gully in one run. It won't be safe to do that much longer, but what fun ! Still great conditions on the trail and we trotted on out in quick time. We saw 3 other folks on the summit, arriving just after us, and 4 coming up the ridge as we descended. A few more on the trail, but suprisingly light traffic for such a nice day. Lot's of folks hiking out towards the Lakes, perhaps.