Granite Mountain
January 2, 2005

On Sunday, Roanne and I woke up to beautiful clear blue skies, and decided to go for a hike.  We settled on Granite Mountain, a 5627 foot peak off I-90 in Snoqualmie Pass.  We packed up our stuff and headed out, bringing our snowshoes just in case.  We started hiking at around 11:00 am, and it wasn't long before we got to the avalanche chute the hiking trail crosses.  Here is a photo of Roanne stopping for a break shortly before reaching that point:

There was hardly any snow on the south side of the mountain, so there was no avalanche danger, and I managed to convince Roanne that trails are boring, so we should find some real adventure by taking the direct route to the top, straight up one of the ridges near the avalanche chute.  We actually meant to go up the ridge to the left of the chute, but as it turned out we went straight up one of the ridges in the avalanche chute itself.  This was a bit steep and sketchy at points (well, I guess almost the entire way), and the fact that we had only trekking poles (no ice axes or crampons) didn't help either.  Here is a photo of Roanne as we stopped for a break part way up the ridge on the way to the summit:

We finally arrived on top, and were greeted by the sight of the cabin, which provided shelter from the strong wind as we ate our lunch and prepared to head down again.  Here are some photos from on top:

For the way down we took the hikers trail, which goes down the back side, which is north facing, and thus had tons more snow that the side we climbed up.  This was good, because it gave us a chance to don our snowshoes which we had been carrying the entire way up until that point.  We had a lot fun running down the steep sections of deep powder, with at least one face plant in the snow recorded.  Here are a couple more photos, one of Roanne snowshoeing, and one looking back up at the cabin as we descended:




It was a really fun trip, hopefully we can get out again soon, maybe with some more snow next time.