Znow on Granite Mountain

Decided yesterday to take the dogs hiking up in the snow. Picked the ONLY rainy day - but in retrospect also the perfect day!

Granite Mountain is a good training hike. About 3,600 vertical in just over 4 miles. On a hot summer day, it can be a smelter! Once you exit the forest at about 4,000 feet, you are exposed to the scorching sun. If hiking with dogs, there is a stretch here that has no or little water in the summer - and it is extremely hot. Caution is advised. Your pouch will suffer.

But today we were in lucky. It rained when we left Seattle, it was overcast at the trailhead and only a few cars. The air was lukewarm and full of refreshing humidity. Perfect day for a quick hike up. Shouldn't take more than two hours!

Dogs knew what was coming and happy to get out of the car. As soon as we started, they sped up the trail, but never further than that they always kept an eye on us. Guarding instinct is deeply rooted! A fair amount of water in the small streams along the trail indicated that there should be a fair amount on snow higher up.

Wife got sort of winded after about 40 minutes or so. Started talking about not making it!? I managed to move the pit stop until we were out of the forest and at 4,300 feet. Everyone got fed and watered. Convinced wife that we just had to make it to 5,000 feet before ANY discussions about turning around. The weather was really perfect, both for humans and dogs, but at 4,600 feet, just after the first little snow field (=very happy dogs), the sky opened up. A real squall with no clearing in sight. I trotted on, eager to get as far as possible. When we hit 5,000, it sort of just stopped, and the sun came out. I was soaked, but wife pointed out that "there's the summit" (she been there once before) - a good sign. Since the weather was clearing, and her spirits better, I convinced her to go "all the way". Would also allow for the dogs to get a good run in the larger snow fields on the Northern side of the summit ridge.

We spent about an hour on the summit munching down and lightening our backpacks. Saw a few marmots on the way down, always at a distance. 20 minutes fro mthe car, the sky opened up again and down at the parking lot, both dogs were very eager to both get out of the rain and into a "soft spot" to take a long snooze! All in all, in a slow poke pace it took as about 2h40m to reach the top. All together about 5 hours out in the "wild".

A truly good day in the mountains. Check out some of the pictures here below.

BTW, there was a traffic accident in the West bound lanes at I-90. Accident must have happened just about 30 minutes before we reached the trail head (State Patrol wooshed by us). A tractor trailer with a construction crane seemed to have "sort of" taken aim at a rock wall on the north side of the freeway. That happens...
But, was there really a need to keep the freeway blocked off during this entire time? State Patrol had blocked it down to just one lane before we got there, and that blockage was still in effect when we got off the mountain. Combined, that was much longer than 6 hours, choking the only true East-West route through the mountains.
All for a dinky little accident (it was not even reported on the news - even though we could see a news chopper from the summit).

(and yes, it is rain, heavy rain, you can see in the first image - click on it)