Granite Peak with Sheri and Homie

Photos coming soon, but you can see the best ones on Strava

Strava approach
Climb
Strava hike out

My niece Schuyler’s wedding was scheduled for September 10th in Big Sky, Montana. Being newly retired, Sheri and I decided to head in that direction a week early to do some peak bagging. Sheri wanted to climb Granite Peak, the highest in Montana and I was interested in Pilot Peak, just south of there, in Wyoming. Since Pilot Peak is technical (the easiest route up is rated 5.7), I recruited Homie as a partner. Turns out, he also wanted Granite Peak, so that worked out great.

I’d climbed Granite Peak before, with Derek, when he was 16 years old, as part of the G3 Summit Trip. We approached it from the north via Froze To Death Plateau. This is the easiest approach, but leads to a more technical route, though still just 4th class and quite steep and sustained for that grade. In order to add more variety to my second ascent, I advocated for the southern approach. This starts out of Cooke City, Montana which also happens to be the start for Pilot Peak. 

Sheri and I drove up on Saturday and got a hotel room. All the official campgrounds said “No Tents’ because of active grizzly bears. Plus, it was quite hot and we wanted a place to relax and hang out. We got to watch the US Open on TV, so that was a bonus. Homie met us at the hotel the next morning, having finished the drive that morning.

We packed up and drove four miles to the trailhead and headed out. I had a newly purchased canister of bear spray on my hip belt, ready to defend my team at the first sign of a charging bear. I must say I was not disappointed that we didn’t see any bear signs at all on this trip.

The hike followed a nice trail for about four miles, but then it became…adventurous. The rest of the way must have been at least 50% of talus walking, almost all of it off trail. It was grueling going, finishing with a very steep, big boulder, 400-foot drop to upper Sky Top Lake. This last bit, with an overnight pack, just about did Sheri in. Despite only being about 10.5 miles, it felt more like twenty.

Even on Labor Day weekend, this area was not very crowded. We saw a few people before we broke off trail, but then only two girls and a dog, hiking back to their camp at Upper Aero Lake. They bailed on an ascent of Granite, but three guys in their party persisted. We saw them later, at our camp, and they succeeded. We saw a couple other teams heading out from a successful ascent as well. On the hike itself, it was very lonely.

We arrived at 5 p.m. and set up our tents in a very strong wind. Once up, Sheri had to get into the tent to prevent it from blowing away, while I passed gear into her and secured the rain fly with numerous stakes and boulders. After dinner, I was in the tent for good before 7 p.m. 

Now, below the peak and staring directly at the face we were to climb, Sheri grew nervous that it might be too much for her. She said, "I think I didn't do enough research on this peak before this trip." The two young women who turned around had her second-guessing her skills and tolerance for stress. Head on, the face looked very steep and intimidating. Sheri wondered aloud if it would be better for just Homie and I to climb it. She decided to head up the peak in the morning and bail if it became too stressful.

The next morning we were moving at 7 a.m. A few minutes out of camp, we saw two other campers getting ready to climb the peak as well. We gained a grassy ridge and reveled in the easy, boulder-free going for a full twenty minutes. Then it was back to talus, boulders, scree, and scrambling. We gained the ridge to the right of the peak and had to descend a bit to the saddle. On the way out, we’d take a more direct path across a permanent snowfield.

We ascended a steep, loose scree cone towards a pinch with an overhang. We broke hard left and scrambled around it onto more solid talus above. Not solid, mind you, but less loose. We followed this up to the base of a huge, unbroken slab, which is the defining landmark on this side of the mountain. We traversed underneath it, to the left, until we arrived at the Southwest Ramp that rose up and right along the side of the great slab.

This route is mostly class 2 and 3, but there are three crux sections, the first two with fixed lines. We didn’t use the first lines and were able to scramble around to the right, on the very edge of the slab, on solid rock. At the second fixed line, we used it a bit to get up a steep, wet section. The final crux is the steepest and most sustained and there is no fixed line here, though there is a rappel anchor above it. Homie did a wide stem and some face climbing on the right and Sheri didn’t like the look of that. I found a route up on the left but when I downclimbed it to spot Sheri up, I found it trickier than I’d prefer. 

Sheri started up it and at the crux, with me behind her and not really able to give her much of a spot, I regretted this decision. It was too hard. I expected Sheri to balk and we’d have to reverse back to the gully to don harnesses and break out the rope. But before I could fret for long, Sheri moved up confidently through the crux. We continued upwards on steep but easier ground and soon gained the final gully to the summit ridge. Once there, it was a few minutes along the ridge to the very summit!

We arrived just before 10 a.m., so we did the ascent in less than three hours. We ate our lunch on top and enjoyed the views. Sheri and I both put on our harnesses, as I didn’t want her down climbing any of the tricky sections. I also pulled out the rope, of course. We all pulled on our shells, as it was quite windy and we wouldn’t be working as hard on the descent.

We reversed the ridge back to the final gully and there we ran into the two climbers we passed early that morning and a third guy that had just tacked onto them. The timing was good, as we’d be able to get down the Ramp before they entered the top and became a rockfall danger to us. 

We down climbed as far as I dared with Sheri and I put a sling around a pinch as an anchor to lower Sheri. She never learned how to rappel and doesn’t need that skill often, so I just lower her down. She hadn’t done anything like this in quite a while and I thought she’d be more nervous, but she immediately weighted the rope and went over the edge.

Once down, I dropped the roped, pulled my anchor, and downclimbed. Homie had already downclimbed and was leading Sheri down the Ramp as I coiled the rope and followed. At the two fixed lines below, I lowered Sheri once again. It all went very smoothly and soon we were stripping off our harnesses at the bottom of the ramp. 

Sheri had done so well on this climb — ascending quickly and confidently and without a rope, despite doing some 4th class or maybe low 5th class moves. Plus, we moved as quickly as I’ve ever seen her move over talus. This was excellent talus to gain confidence. It was mostly big, almost all solid (once off the peak itself), with flattish tops. Sheri cruised. 

We carefully descended all the loose talus back to the snowfield, slid across that, and then descended talus to the glorious grass ridge. We were back in camp at 1 p.m. — six hours roundtrip. We decided to at least start hiking out and were on the move, after a rest and some food, by 2 p.m. 

We decided to go out via the Sky Top Lakes approach, thinking it couldn’t be worse than what we did on the approach. A major difference, though, was that we started this hike after a 6-hour climb. The first three miles of this route was mostly talus traversing, and this was very tough on Sheri now that she wore a heavy pack. It was slow going and after these three miles, we took a break and Sheri decided that we should tell Homie to go on ahead, as he was committed to reaching the trailhead and we didn’t think we’d make it.

Less than a mile further we caught the two guys that had camped near us (they had gone by us earlier). Homie decided to hook on to them and hike out. Sheri and I continued until just past 7 p.m. when we found a flat spot near the trail and near water. We had just enough time to purify our water, cook and eat dinner, and brush our teeth before it got dark. 

We awoke to lots of dew on our tent and the grass around us. I brewed us a couple of coffees and we packed up. We hiked for nearly a mile sipping coffee from our mugs. After an hour and fifteen minutes, having seen just two other people, we arrived at the trailhead and found Homie just returning from a short walk. We threw our packs in the car and headed for town, with visions of a big breakfast in a nice restaurant with Wifi. We were going to be disappointed.

The only places open in Cooke City were the two gas stations. They did have coffee and one even had fresh donuts, but we persisted in our quest. At one station they told us about the cafe in Silver Gate, less than three miles away. We started salivating once again, but upon arriving there we were greeted by a sign that said, “See you in Summer 2023!” We retreated back to Cooke City and got gas-station coffee and a couple of donuts.

Post-adventure lassitude struck down Homie with a vengeance. Instead of dreaming of our next peak, he fixated on the burgers being advertised by a couple of local restaurants that looked like they’d open up for lunch and dinner. I, of course, was raring to go but reined in my boundless energy to sit in the shade at the visitor center and write this report. Our new plan was to blast early the next day for Pilot Peak.