Granite Lakes 2017-01-13

10.7 miles and 2,340 feet of elevation gain.

The Middle Fork road has been paved.  With the snow and freezing temperatures the tire tracks where two strips of black ice.  Fortunately we only had to travel a short distance to the trailhead.  Started with microspikes and took the snowshoes along for a ride.  There was a good track in the snow and we never used snowshoes.  The hike in March of 2016 was cut short because of the scores of downed trees that blocked the trail.  The trail is now clear all the way to the lakes.  At the area between the lakes the track vanished and snowshoes would have been useful but it was getting time to turn around anyway.

Google Maps link

The bridge over Granite Creek.

 On the trail

 

The back side of Dirty Harry's Peak.  It is hard to see in the picture but there are several large areas of ice that have a blue tings.

 

Granite Lakes Trail 2016-03-30

7.17 miles and 1,370 feet of elevation gain.

I had been planning a snowshoe trip up to Granite Lakes but trip reports indicated an impassible blowdown area just after crossing Granite Creek.  One trip report called it "Blowdown Town".  I decided to wait awhile.  I haven't seen any recent trip reports so off we went.

The trailhead is located at the beginning of the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River Road, about a quarter mile from the end of the paved road.  Usually the potholes aren't too bad on this section of the road.  Today they were incredibly bad, I assume from all the heavy equipment used to upgrade the road.   The road is scheduled to be paved this year starting in late April.

New steel beam bridges were installed recently at the first creek crossing, where a culvert was remove a few years ago, and at Granite Creek.  The Granite Creek bridge replaced the temporary log bridge that was installed when the old logging road was 'landscaped' into a trail and the original log bridge was removed.

Once past Granite Creek, many of the blowdowns have been cut and cleared from the trail.  A good sign, I was hopeful the trail would be cleared.  Farther up the trail, trees were cut just enough to make a hole to get through.  At about a half mile from the bridge all chainsaw work had stopped.  You can get a few more feet up the trail before hitting the next wall of trees. 

Counting the trees not blocking the trail, there are probably several hundred downed trees.  Looking on the north side of the trail you can see large areas where well over half the trees are down.

Google Maps link

The first bridge (Mine Creek?)

The Granite Creek bridge.

The remains of the temporary log bridge.

One of the blowdown areas north of the trail.

One of the holes cut in the trees.

Looking back on the last of the chainsaw work.

This is where we turned around.  The trees are so dense that getting through would be next to impossible. Blue made a valiant effort, can you see him?  I could see much farther up the trail than what is visible in this picture and it looked the same.

pub 4/9/2016

Granite Lakes 2014-01-27

11.07 miles and 2,436 feet of elevation gain.

I wanted to see what the new road to trail conversion looked like on the lower portion of this trail.  Our previous hikes, after the conversion, have bypassed the lower portion of the trail by using the "shortcut" trail (see Revolution Peak Cabin 2013-06-13).  The shortcut saves almost three miles on the round-trip.  I believe the conversion was a great success.  Although on the upper portions of the trail, that are above the snow line, the removal of small culverts has resulted in many snow canyons.  These can be very difficult to navigate when the snow is deep. 

 

The new trail head, quite different from the muddy road with a gate that you had to climb around.

 

A large culvert used to be here, it prevented any access to the creek.  Blue likes it better this way.

A log seat with a view of several Middle Fork peaks.  I think this is a portion of one of the logs from the old logging road bridge across Granite Creek.

The log bridge that replaced the old logging road bridge. 

The bigger of the Granite Lakes.

The cabin on the way to Revolution Peak.