Absarokee to Red Lodge, Montana. Monday-Tuesday, June 17-18, 2024.
Granite Peak is considered by many to be the toughest highpoint after Denali. It’s the only one that requires rock climbing skills. The other tough ones are all ice climbs.
The year we all turned 50, that is 20 years ago, my friends Brian, Eric, and I thought we could do it on our own. Websites said that if you stuck to a certain route, it was really quite doable. They were full of photographs about which ridge and crease to follow. There was no blazing on the mountain, so we printed those photographs and took them with us. This was in 2004, before smartphones. I asked colleague of mine, Geoff Tabin, ophthalmologist and world renowned mountaineer (he climbed the Seven Summits) if he thought it looked feasible, and he responded by climbing 15 feet up the brick wall of our clinic in street clothes. Sure, he said, no problem.
We started off bravely, encountering buff young adults who had done the whole thing in a single day, and who also said, no problem. That was before 26 switchbacks up to the disconcertingly-named Froze to Death Plateau, and we realized maybe we weren’t as buff as we thought we were. Or I should say, I wasn’t buff enough. I was slowing down the group. We hadn’t brought enough food for a multi day trip, so Brian and Eric went back down to purchase more, while I moved the camp as close to the actual Peak as possible. I hunkered down on Tempest Peak, right before a thunderstorm raged and had me cowering in the tent, praying I wouldn’t get hit by lightning. When Brian and Eric returned, we moved to a safer location.
While waiting to start the climb early the next morning, we were amused and l somewhat discomforted by the hordes of mountain goats on the plateau.
They were never aggressive but frequently came close, we had the guard our food, learned to pee some distance from my camp, as the goats loved to lick the salt. Eew.
We got up at the crack of dawn to start climbing the peak itself, but were greeted by a snow and hailstorm. When it cleared, and the day was sunny, we got our first good look at the climb ahead.
Eric was still game to give it a try, but I felt was no way we were going to climb this mountain on our own. We went back down, feeling disgruntled. This might have been the first time we turned back on a mountain.
12 years later, in 2016, the Highpointers Club held their annual convention in nearby Red Lodge, Montana. They offered the opportunity for a guided climb, so a bunch of us signed up with Jackson Hole Mountain Guides. They recommended we hire a porter to haul our heavy gear up to the plateau. I was reluctant to do that, felt like cheating, but then I realized I’d hauled my own gear up that time before, and I wanted to maximize my chances.
You remember on my Borah Peak post the description of climbing classes. Class 1 was a walk up, Class 2 a scramble, Class 3 hairy but doable without a rope, Class 4 you need to rope up. Class 5 you also need to provide “protection”, anchors and carabiners along your way to catch you if you fall. Class 5 climbs are also broken down by difficulty, so 5.1 is the easiest, and it goes up to El Capitan crazy. We had a rock climbing clinic the day before the hike, and they took us up some 5.4 stretches, which they said would be as difficult as it would get.
Of all the guided climbs I’ve taken, only one has been unpleasant, our guide today. He was a martinet, barking orders and pushing us to keep moving. We rapidly realized we were in much tougher terrain than anything we had practiced on, going up dicey arrêttes and chimneys—on one occasion I got stuck, someone had to push me from below and pull from above. We suspected he had gotten off route. When we got to the top, I was so frazzled, I’m not even sure I took a picture, I can’t find one in my files. I remember seeing smoke in the direction of Yellowstone. It would’ve been much easier if we could have rappelled going down, but that took extra effort on the part of our guide and he didn’t want to set that up, so we had to downclimb, even scarier than going up.
It wasn’t fun, but we made it.
I knew today wouldn’t be fun either, getting to the trailhead, lots of vertical and steep gravel. Like on Borah, I dropped my bags at the road junction, but this time the out-and-back was 34 miles. I let some air out of my tires for better traction and flotation, but it didn’t help much with the soft spots and washboarding.
2 miles before the trailhead I passed the campsite where Brian and Eric and I had stayed the night before the hike, I thought maybe we had walked from there and I could turn around now, but I didn’t want to take it for Granite. No, I pushed on until the signs would not let me go further, and documented that I was at the trailhead.
Wow. That’s 23 highpoints I’ve now done from sea level, out of 37 total. Also, my odometer had just rolled over to 2,000 miles. There were a couple of young women there with the forest service, I wanted to take a celebratory photo with them, but they told me they were not allowed to appear on social media. (This is social media?)
Just as well. It was freezing up there, and starting to rain, the washboard was bone-rattling on the way down, but I let it rip, hoping I wouldn’t get a blowout. Reuniting with my bags, I realized I had 26 miles to go, with the steepest hills yet to come. I reached for the rocket fuel I hadn’t touched in days, a Frappuccino, and discovered to my horror that my suntan lotion tube had burst open with the altitude, and coated everything in my rear pack with that sticky zinc oxide goo.
I had started at six that morning, but was behind schedule and was racing for a deadline. Bill George is a Family Practitioner, the brother of a friend of mine, she had connected us and he had offered me a place to stay in Red Lodge. We both had Massachusetts roots, and the final game of the NBA championship was on, we were hoping to catch it in a bar. The Frappuccino wore off pretty quickly, and I had to push my bike up five hills. I hated to keep my friend waiting. He met me in his pick-up about a mile from his house, moosing my 125 pound bike into the truck might’ve taken more effort than just pedaling it. But we caught the last half of the game, the Celtics winning their 18th championship, and all was good in the world.
Bill and Mary have a lovely home and two beautiful dogs; it was raining the next day, so they offered to host me for a rest day as well. That gave me a chance to have breakfast with one of my favorite former patients, Nile Schneider and his wife Linda, who are RVing across the country after spending many years cruising the Bahamas. They have been following me on the blog and altered their plans so we could meet up. What a treat.
I also got to catch up on sleep, make future plans, complete the blogging, and have one more incredible meal, at Prerogative Kitchen. It seemed unfair, one small town having three terrific restaurants.
A day of pampering after a day of pain. And now, finally, I can take it for Granite.
Distance 71 miles, 2,012 total. Time 13 hours with stops. Elevation gain 5,820 feet
©️ 2024 Scott Luria
The Ends of the Earth 