Beartooth Range
I had been contemplating a solo attempt on Granite Peak, the high point of Montana for some time, but couldn’t see where I would find the time to get out there during climbing season. Well, I got an unexpected break from work, and although it was already the middle of September, with suitable weather fast disappearing, I thought I would give Granite a try. I checked the weather report for Red Lodge, Montana and learned that there was a window of five days or so of fair weather in the Granite Peak area. In a race to take advantage of that weather, I left a day ahead of my plans and arrived at the trail head in three days of driving from eastern Kentucky. I drove through Illinois and Iowa and my state high pointing soul was saddened to bypass those two easy tags, but I could not tarry along the way if I was to attempt Granite in good weather. Charles Mound and Hawkeye Point would have to wait.
I chose the Silver Lake Trail/Mystic Lake/Phantom Creek Trail/Froze-to-Death Plateau approach to Granite. The last fifteen miles to the trail head is a rough dirt road that takes a solid hour and fifteen minutes to travel at front end alignment saving speed. Along this road there is a forest service campground several miles before the trail head, but it was closed. Two miles before the trail head there is another that was open, and to that one I repaired to set up my tent and prepare for the climb. As I ate my dinner I turned on my trusty weather radio for the latest report. Surprise, surprise, they are calling for a cold front to move in the next day with a drastic drop in temperatures, precipitation, and high winds. So much for the week of nice weather they had predicted a few days previous.
I debated with myself about whether or not I should still go on with the climb. If the weather was going to be nasty at the lower elevations, what would it be like some 4,000 feet higher on the infamous Froze-to-Death Plateau which must be traversed for some six miles in order to approach that massive peak called Granite? I decided to abort the trip, and slept in the next morning rather disappointed. The morning was very pleasant and sunny. The cold front was not due until that evening. Over a cup of coffee I reevaluated my situation and figured that since I am here at the trail head with my backpack ready to go, I would at least hike up to Mystic Lake, camp there, and explore a bit.
I drove the two miles to the trail head. There were several vehicles in the parking area. The area is popular for hunting, fishing, and day hiking, as well as for aspirants to Montana’s highest mountain. I slung on my pack and headed up Silver Lake Trail toward Mystic Lake. This was a pleasant hike with some thousand feet gain in elevation and beautiful scenery. The path goes past some clever hydroelectric works that harness water from the surrounding mountains. The three miles to Mystic Lake takes about one and a half hours at a moderate pace. About half way through the three mile hike I encountered a climber returning to the trail head. He had been camped at the end of Froze-to-Death Plateau near Granite the previous night and reported cold and extremely high winds that shredded his tent and blew rocks off the top of the wind shelter by his tent. He had packed up and retreated down to the valley, having failed in his third attempt on the mountain. He was a local man from Columbus, Montana. I reasoned that if that is what it is like up there in “good” weather conditions, then when the cold front arrives that night it would be much worse.
With these thoughts in mind I continued on. One arrives at Mystic Lake looking down from the trail above. It is quite picturesque. After walking down a few switchbacks to the level of the lake, a half mile hike along the lake to the left through the woods brings you to Phantom Creek Trail, which begins the switchbacks ascending to the saddle of Froze-to-Death Plateau. The fellow I had met on the trail had informed me that this juncture with Phantom Creek Trail was not marked with a sign, as my information indicated. I am glad I learned of this because otherwise I probably would have bypassed the trail looking for another with a sign. The trail was marked with a cairn and begins near a small meadow with clear areas under the trees that make for good camp sites.
At this point I felt good and it was still early in the day, so I decided to ascend the switch backs to Froze-to-Death Plateau for a look-see. Up I went with my heavy pack. The views from the trail were spectacular. It took me about three and a half hours to go the three miles to the saddle. It is about a three thousand foot gain. At the top of the switchbacks I saw a tent that belonged to some hunters from Tennessee, a young man and his father, who were after mountain sheep. I noticed that their tent was rather primitive, held up by branches with both ends of the tent open. I ran into the young man later and we talked a bit. They had been hunting there in previous years, seemed to know the area, and appeared to be a competent outdoors men, so I didn’t quiz him on his odd tent, figuring it was none of my beeswax.
After the switchbacks, there is a straighter section of the trail that leads up to the saddle itself. There is a large cairn along the trail on the saddle with a stick pointing southwest over Froze-to-Death Plateau. I decided to hike along the plateau for a while. If you study your topographic map of this area, you will discover that the plateau is not a flat reprieve from the switch backs, providing a pleasant cake walk to the base of Granite Peak. On the contrary, this sloped plateau rises and falls many hundreds of feet along the way. It is littered with rocks, boulder fields, glaciers, permanent snow fields, and even marshy areas that do allow for easy passage. I had with me the 1:24,000 map/climbing guide for Granite Peak put out by firstascentpress.com.
From the saddle, there is a trek of about five miles to reach the stone shelters at the plateau’s further end where most climbers set up base camp. This trek can be divided into three sections of about one and three quarters of a mile each. The first section goes south/southwest, the second section turns in a more westerly direction, and the third turns again in a south/southwest direction. The first section is all uphill from the saddle. I hiked along this section for an hour till about 5:00 pm. At this point I had to decide whether or not to continue on or to turn back and descend to Mystic Lake. It was getting cold and some ugly clouds were moving in fast. I thought of a recent thread on summit post website about stupid people who don’t know when to turn back in the mountains in the face of threatening weather. I didn’t want to be one of those stupid people, so I turned back. I arrived at Mystic Lake as night was falling and I set up my tent near the trail juncture. I cooked some freeze dried spaghetti for supper. To relax, I did some tai chi under the many bright stars and then turned in.
The predicted cold front and nasty weather never materialized, at least at the lower elevation of Mystic Lake. I don’t know how it was on the plateau. The next morning I packed up and hiked the three miles to the trail head. I needed to check the latest report on my weather radio, regroup, and formulate new plans. I drove back to my forest service camp site and had a good meal. The weather report was actually rather favorable for the next couple of days. In my conversation with the climber the previous day we spoke of doing Granite Peak in one day, with a lower, more sheltered base camp at Mystic Lake. The trek up the switchbacks and across the plateau would be much easier with just a day pack. My fitness level was pretty good, so I thought I would give this a try. Back to the trail head I drove and back to Mystic Lake I went. I set up camp again at the same place and retired early. I would start in the dark the next morning at 4:00 am. It would be an eight mile hike from my base camp to the other end of Froze-to-Death Plateau.
I got up at 3:00 am the next morning and had pop-tarts and coffee for breakfast. It was rather cold, but I dressed lightly because as soon as I left my camp site I would be ascending switchbacks. I did, however, put adequate cold weather clothing in my day pack so that in case of bad weather I wouldn’t freeze to death on Froze-to-Death Plateau. For walking in the dark I put on my el cheapo head light, which worked better than my more expensive one. The switchbacks proved easier with a day pack than with the full backpack I carried two days earlier. As I emerged above the tree line in the dark, I looked up to the shadowy line of the plateau and saw Orion the Hunter shining bright in the late night sky to the south, and the Big Dipper was there more to the northeast.
It was light enough to turn off my head lamp at 6:00 am, and I still had a ways to go to the top of the switchbacks. This was not good and showed one important detail in my lack of preparation. I thought it would have gotten lighter later and that I would have been at the saddle by now. My plan was to be a good mile or so across Froze-to-Death Plateau when the morning light arrived, but I was still trudging up the switchbacks. Well, can’t do much about that now. I picked up the pace a bit and kept moving. I arrived at the saddle and again turned south/southwest to begin the trek across Froze-to-Death Plateau.
I was now at about 10,000 feet elevation. The other end of the plateau, where base camp is usually made, is about 12,000 feet elevation. The first leg of the hike is all uphill. I was feeling a little tired but decided not to take a break for an hour or so until I could see the second leg of the trek. I walked about a mile and a half to the top of the slope and sat down by a rock for a break. I could see almost the entire length of the second leg of my trek from there. I enjoyed a snack of Tang, Slim Jims, and M & M peanuts. That little break really picked me up and I headed down the slope for my next leg of the plateau in good spirits. I didn’t really need a compass here because all that is required is to keep the high areas to your left, namely, Froze-to-Death mountain, and follow a southwest direction determined from the position of the sun.
I made good time on the next mile and three quarters and began to look for where I was supposed to turn left and head south/southwest for the last leg of the plateau trek. Froze-to-Death mountain is the first one you encounter as you begin your hike across the plateau. But there is another unnamed mountain directly southwest of Froze-to-Death mountain that you must pass before turning left to head for the end of the plateau. Directly west of this mountain, on the other side of the plateau is a very large permanent snow field or glacier. Walk south/southwest in between this snow field and the mountain and you will be heading in the right direction.
I’ll say a couple of things about the famous cairns that supposedly guide you across the plateau. They are not to be relied on as a guide, especially in the beginning of the plateau hike where they are few and far between. There is no trail across the plateau, only rocks, rocks, and more rocks. Some of the cairns I encountered seemed to be out of the way of a logical connect-the-dot pattern. Most of the time you cannot see the next cairn from the one by which you are standing. Although you cannot rely on them, I did find the cairns to be helpful in confirming the direction I chose to walk from consulting my topo map and using my own wit. Also, there are wind shelters, low stone walls, along the length of Froze-to-Death Plateau, but on my hike to Granite I did not see any of them. They are nothing but low walls of rocks in a sea of rocks, very difficult to spot. If a storm came up while walking across the plateau, it would be hard to find one of these stone shelters in a hurry unless you happened to stumble across one. On my return hike back across the plateau later in the day, however, I did come across many of these shelters.
The last leg of the plateau hike is all uphill. As you walk up this slope you will get your first glimpse of Granite Peak, peaking over the saddle. It is quite impressive. After gaining the saddle, the plateau narrows considerably and soon you will come to its end. Here the contours of the plateau open up somewhat and you can see clusters of wind shelters here and there at the plateau’s end. I completed my trek across the plateau and took a rest at one of the shelters. It was 9:30 am and it had taken me three hours to traverse the plateau with a day pack. I had set myself 9:00 am as the latest time I could safely arrive at the base of Granite to begin the rock climbing phase to the summit. 9:30 am was pretty close to that and I was quite pleased with my progress and thought I still had a good shot at summiting the mountain. The only problem was that I was not even near the base of the mountain, even though I was at the end of the plateau. I studied my map and route directions and realized that I still had a mile or so to go up a slope before I even reached the last ridge before the snow bridge to begin climbing.
I began this last mile and discovered it to be a challenging field of large boulders, all up hill. The cairns were helpful here, but it took me a solid hour of toil to get up this unexpected stretch. I arrived at the top of this slope to the point where most of Granite is clearly visible as the spectacular mountain it is. Someone had built a huge stone cairn here with white rocks at the top as a kind of monument to the mountain. Looking down at the last ridge before the snow bridge I realized it would take an hour or more to scramble it. It was now 11:00 am, two hours past my time limit, and I was still not even at the snow bridge. I needed to decide what to do. The day had been clear up to that point, but I now saw clouds moving in from the west. The wind had picked up to where it took an effort to stand upright. In my research of the mountain I had never acquired a reliable time frame as to how long it takes to summit and return to the snow bridge. I had heard anywhere from six to twelve hours. Even if I did it in fine weather in, say, eight hours, that would still leave me at 7:00 pm with nine miles of very rough terrain to cover mostly in the dark with a good chance of nasty weather coming in. I looked at Granite and was smitten to the heart with desire to climb it. But as I evaluated my situation logically, it seemed to be too risky of a proposition. It was just too late in the day. With a sigh of disappointment, I bid farewell to Granite Peak, turned my back to the mountain, and began the long march back to base camp at Mystic Lake.
It is a very satisfying feeling to be able to walk eighteen miles over very rough terrain, mostly at an elevation over 10,000 feet with 5,000 feet of gain. I did not see a single person all day, but did see three of the famous Granite Peak mountain goats on the way back. Although I did not summit, I really did enjoy this adventure. The beauty of Froze-to-Death Plateau and the surrounding mountains was absolutely stunning. I would highly recommend a trip just to explore the plateau, whether or not one wants to climb Granite. I learned a lot, experienced wilderness beauty at its best, and got a close up view of Montana‘s highest peak.
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