Beautiful morning as I got up to the summit of Granite Mountain-Conconully, but boy was it tough going with the blowdowns and the soft deep snow conditions.
The road from Conconully is in great shape until you get on NF road 100. Most of this road is in great shape, but there are some ruts going down the road in a few spots. My Subaru Outback did fine, and there was a trailer up past this part, but just beware of this. I was glad I had high clearance.
After car camping at the trailhead, I got started at 6:15 am to beat the heat of the day. The first part of the hike goes through some beautiful open forest with larch, pine, and fir trees before switch backing up to a saddle. This part had been logged out with just a couple of small trees down across the trail.
Up around 5300ft was where the mass of blowdowns began. Shortly thereafter the blowdowns became even more difficult at around 5500ft, as I was now running into very sloppy snow and remained so up and beyond the saddle. This part was the most difficult with the post holing mid thigh, along with some tough blowdowns. Not a good combo climbing over blowdowns while post holing up past the knee. Yikes
Once I got past the saddle and began the 1500ft ascent up to the summit the snow disappeared and the trail was clear until I ran into a section of blowdowns at around 6100ft. After this it was smooth sailing until I hit snow again at 6800ft. Here I went cross country to avoid the sloppy snow, staying on rock, dirt, and downed trees. Once I got up to the ridgetop, it was all snow to the summit. Somewhat consolidated up until about 20ft from the summit, where I fell in numerous holes up to my crotch. Got my foot stuck once which was a little disconcerting, as I was solo. I had to dig myself out. After seeing some pictures of the summit in the summer, I realize that I was crossing over boulders with gaps. Not good with the way the snow conditions were. The huge summit boulder on the summit was however snow free, which I was able to stand on the top of
Some great views of many snow covered Bulgers from the Chelan Sawtooths all the way up to Windy Peak from the summit ridge. The summit itself had some trees blocking the views to the west. On the way down off the summit I climbed up a rock outcrop to the top for a better view, but were still no better than from the ridgeline.
I took the same way back finishing at noon. 8.8 miles with 3635ft gain
GPS track below. Red track is the hike. Yellow track is the drive to the trailhead from Conconully
Comments