This last Saturday, I squeezed in a hike to Granite Mountain in the Cascades with a friend before the end of the hiking season!
It’s certainly nearing the end of the season and I was a bit concerned about us doing this hike at all since it had snowed the night and I don’t have my crampons, but we decided to chance it had ended up having great weather the whole way with only some rain near the end of the hike! Temperatures were probably between 30 and 50F throughout the hike.
We headed out from Ballard around 7AM and hit the trail around 8AM (it’s really just off the freeway), summiting around 11AM, and getting back to the car around 1PM, and back to Ballard at 2PM.
WTA claims this is a 8.6 mile roundtrip hike with 3800 ft of elevation change, and it was probably the elevation change that kicked our butts so much, but we were surprised by how long the hike ended up taking, so I would budget at least 5 hours, though we did move a bit slower because of the snow on the rocks near the top. It wasn’t too strenuous but we did find ourselves pausing our conversation in parts to focus on ascending and save the breath.
Overall though, it wasn’t very slippery and the trail was really well maintained and the snow wasn’t really sticking on the ground, just the vegetation.
We didn’t have much view as we were ascending until we neared the peak and were above the cloud cover and then we got really stunning views of the clouds (my friend who is a pilot kept remarking that he felt like he was in a plane) and the Cascades. The peak is the very definitive ending of a lookout tower you can’t enter but has great rocks next to it to sit down on to eat lunch. We sat there for a bit soaking up the view until our fingers got too cold and we had to start moving again to warm up.
We joked that we felt like we were moving through all the seasons on the hike – starting out in “summer,” moving up through “autumn” (where the leaves were changing), then through “winter” (with snow-covered evergreens), and then even back into “spring” at the top of the hike where the snow was melting.
On our way down, the snow was all starting to melt into puddles, which made some parts a bit more difficult to climb down, but only really in the top half of the hike.
As far as amenities, there’s an exposed pit toilet near the summit (there’s a clear sign) and a toilet in the parking lot at the start of the hike.
You’ll need the NW Forest Pass for this hike (you can easily buy an ePass online) or the America the Beautiful pass works as well!
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