Granite Creek Trail to Granite Lakes, Thompson Lake via Granite Creek Trail & Thompson Point — Monday, Mar. 23, 2026

Did a solo hike today to Thompson Point. I'd been to Thompson Lake and Granite Lakes before, but never took the side trip to Thompson Point. It's a bit of a slog hike - kind of reminds me of Bessemer, since it's a similar distance and elevation gain, and a lot of it is on former logging roads. I took some shortcuts and ended up with about 12 miles and 4300' of ascent. Fortunately, the snow was very firm today, so I didn't even bother putting on my snowshoes until the final 200' below the summit.

The snow is intermittent from the blowdown messes up to the Granite Lakes junction, then fairly consistent above that to Thompson Point or Thompson Lake. Oddly, as you approach the ridge to Thompson Lake on that trail, the snow entirely disappears. I dropped down from Thompson Point to the Thompson Lake Trail on this ridge, and it hardly had any snow on it, except in the upper part just below Thompson Point.

Others have done a good job of describing the mess of blowdowns on the Granite Creek Trail. They are pretty challenging to get through, especially if you have a larger pack, or are carrying snowshoes, like I was. Somehow I managed to get through without taking my pack off, though there was definitely some creative climbing to go over things rather than under them.

Some stats on the blowdowns - hopefully this will be helpful to DNR:

• There are 4 smallish blowdowns below the Granite Connector junction. None are hard to get by.
• Between the Granite Connector junction and the Granite Lakes turnoff, there are 70 trees down across the trail (!!). Only a few are below the bridge, and only a few are past the big S-curve at 2500'. The rest are all in the section just above the bridge, which seems to be a magnet for extreme wind events. At some point there are not going to be any trees left there to fall down.
• There is one small blowdown on the Thompson Lake Trail just above the Granite Lake junction, you can walk under it. On the Thompson Lake Trail (1009.3) past the junction to Thompson Point, there are two quite large blowdowns (16-24") across the trail before you reach the ridge over Thompson Lake. These are both still in the snow zone. I'm not sure how many there are down to the lake, as I didn't hike that part today.   

One final note - there was a small landslide on the Granite Creek Trail at about the 1200' level. It happened in the spot where the trail was on a small micro-ridge with sandy soil sloping down on both sides of the trail. It's definitely still passable, but it might be advisable to move the trail a bit back from the edge, or consider a crib wall. The slide section is adjacent to the trail for maybe 20-30' (see photo #4). The slide is much steeper than it looks in the photo.