Granite Mountain Teaser

Finally the weather forecast looked decent, so Oct 24th, Dawn and I headed down to Prescott to climb on Granite Mountain. The drive was longer than we liked, but uneventful. Then we hiked in and up to the mountain.


On the way we saw 3 tarantulas cruising along. They seemed pretty oblivious to us.


Once we left the main hiking trail we managed to get a bit lost in the rocks, brush, and cacti. Eventually we made it up to the base of the climb along with a surprising number of other climbers and dogs.

The climb we planned on was "Classic", but we ended up with variations on almost every pitch, starting out with Dawn leading "Crack Lover's Variation". For the second pitch I did a pitch of "Slammer Jammer". I'm not sure what we did for the 3rd pitch, it certainly wasn't what our descriptions of the route suggested, but some other climbers said it was the 3rd pitch of "Classic". This took us to the junction of the flying buttress with the main wall. I traversed out on the top of the buttress before finishing up on "Beaver Cleaver" to the top. We had a fat pill to celebrate before rapping down. We weren't sure if the first rap would go with a single 60M rope, so we did some fancy single rope rapping. I think it might have been ok with the 60 and rope stretch, but I am not sure. The next 2 raps were easy, then we had to hike back and make the long drive up to Flagstaff.

Dawn at the 3rd belay from the top of the flying buttress.

Dawn at the same spot viewed from above

Fat pill on the top

Link to my Granite Mountain web page about this trip (about the same but a bit more)

San Francisco Peaks bike/hike teaser

Today I biked up to Snowbowl at 9500 feet and then hiked up to the summit of Humphreys peak at 12633 ft / 3851 m. I left Flagstaff around 7:45 by 8:30 I was biking up the Snowbowl road. This did not go all that quickly. I think I was hiking a bit after 10. I made it to the summit before 1 I think, but I stayed there for a while. The descent went much more quickly, especially the bike part.

It was cool in the morning, but warm enough biking uphill. I was in shorts much of the way to the summit. There I wrapped up for a while. I also put more layers on for the Snowbowl road descent.

Aspens in the Inner Basin

The aspens were just barely starting to change along my route. It looked like more of the ones in the Inner Basin were changing. This was a bit easier than biking up the waterline road to the inner basin I think (and it looked like there was more snow along that route too), but I am still going to be a bit sore tomorrow.

view east down into the inner basin - one of the false summits on the left, Agassiz on the rt.

Here are some links to my earlier ascents of this peak...

2009, 2008, 2004