Granite Mountain hike

[eub]

Last weekend I hiked Granite Mountain. It's at exit 47 off I-90, I mean at exit 47, right by the freeway. I got a late start, and sub-optimally dodged the stretch where 90 was shut down so the Blue Angels could fly over it, so I got there after noon. It was seven hours trailhead-to-trailhead, with a lot of lollygagging and picture-taking; maybe five and a half of actual walking plus necessary sitting and breathing heavily.

The trail (topo map) starts out through forest, gently rising. It then gets decidedly steep, switchbacking up a series of gullies. I had to stop and take pictures of a funny-looking plant I saw a lot of, whose upper leaves turned brick red, spreading down from their tips.

It was cloudy, and had rained on the way out, and I'd packed a wool hat but forgotten a waterproof shell, so I was figuring I'd make the call when I came to the edge of the trees whether it looked likely to be dry. It did stay dry, and the clouds gave good cover from the sun. Sometimes you could see the other side of the valley, and sometimes you couldn't.

The trail broke out from the trees into a meadow, of grasses and shrubs (some huckleberry) and wet plants with long hairs. Pieces of fog moved over the ground.

There were a fair number of people on the trail, and I was glad, because one pointed out THE BEAR. Now, you Westcoasterners probably see bears all the time, but I never had, not for real. So I was glad not to miss that. The bear was trying to make a go for the whistling marmot up on the rocks, it looked like, but quite failed at that. It looked like a young adult to me, not that I'm any judge of bears. (No, no mother visible.)

This was at the downhill edge of a small horseshoe valley, with a stream. Now the trail turned northwards, and I noticed something -- quietness. The traffic noise had been cut off by the knee of the slope. Now the vegetation was creeping heather, and clumps of sedges, lots of something with branching-divided leaves, and occasional trees (what are this needle-clumped tree?). A kind of stalk of white flowers was still blooming, from grassy green lawns at the base of the hills that rose still a bit higher. Split granite crept down them, onto the lawns, where it grew moss and sooty black lichen, and held rain.

This guy's coat was so frightful I thought it was a porcupine, but its mien is marmot.

From here to the top was one last scramble up. The fire tower was locked, so you couldn't licitly get up to that platform, sadly. I ate another lunch and watched the clouds tear and reform over the valleys below. A towering wall of cloud stayed pinned to the rocky ridge to the southwest, bellying out but never breaking over, just half-swallowing the group of trees there.

On the way down the sun came clear for a while, and lit the small lakes blue. On every needle on every tree was a drop of water, and through every drop's fisheye was visible the sun. And the grassy lawns were still wet with rain.

The walk down seemed long -- my boots were in the shop last weekend, and my sneakers weren't so good for this. My knee-muscles were what complained during the descent, but my calves and quads were what ached for a couple of days afterwards. Never too late to get in shape for summer walking.

It was dim in the trees by the time I got down. The red ends of cut logs glowed.

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(A deer, too, but eh, deer. And chipmunks were cute.)