I did a nice group hike yesterday with six other guys. For once, I was not the oldest. David is 73 and he took the toughest route to the summit and is fit enough to have done a seven-day, 25K elevation gain bike ride around Oregon a couple of weeks ago. What a great inspiration.
I finally chugged up to the lookout tower at the summit for a short break before we headed back down:
Granite Mountain is not an easy hike but it is definitely loads of fun. The views yesterday were not terrible but we could only see a little bit of Rainier:
I was very careful going down, as the top half of the trail is very rocky and it would be easy for me to take a nasty fall. The meadow near the summit features wild blueberries (tasty!) and beautiful fall foliage. We made good time:
When Derek and I hiked Granite this summer we showed about 8.3 miles, today the Garmin had it at only 7.8 miles round-trip. But we did take a slightly different route to the summit, going up and down, plus Derek and I wandered around the summit area. Today, we stayed put by the lookout.
Anyway here is the visualization link:
http://adventures.garmin.com/en-US/by/djhiker/granite-mountain-10-1-2016/#.V_EIN5WV8by
3,809 feet elevation gain, about 4 hours 50 minutes, a wonderful fall hike.