[boot up]

Lots of chatter here on the awful, unhikeable results of terraforming a road into a trail. (and yes its an odd use of money in these tight times) I totally agree that people should avoid this trail. after all, we only saw 7 people all day, on a beautiful day, on a meandering trail with lots of variety, when literally a few hundred yards down the road, a knee crunching, brutal climb of Mailbox trail was overflowing. Yup, you don't want to hike this ugly trail.

View up Granite creek from new log bridge. Granite Lakes, new trail, WA 05/11/13

Panorama from Thompson lk trail intersection. Granite Lakes, new trail, WA 05/11/13

view from Thompson fork. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 Feeling fuzzy

Personally, I like its bit of micro roller coastering and winding at the bottom, giving me a chance to use a variety of muscle groups, versus a road climb that just grinds and grinds straight up, then pounds straight down.

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 Lower terraformed road into trail.

By the way, this trail is perfect for real single track mtn biking, which is unfortunately an almost lost art.

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 12.8miles RT 3035 feet elevation gain 3968 feet max elevation 839 feet parking 9.5 hours car to car.

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 12.8miles RT 3035 feet elevation gain 3968 feet max elevation 839 feet parking 9.5 hours car to car.

Biggest downside is the parking lot is a constant dust storm and its small and poorly laid out for parking. ( I have a new ding in my car...watch out for that rock! )

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 really dusty parking.

Trailhead parking. It won't be this uncrowded for long. Nasty dusty though. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

If you like a more road-like experience, boogy on up the trail. It appears a lot more effort went into the lower couple of miles of trail, then ran out of steam as it goes up the mountain. Great rock crossings down low...up higher...not so nice. We skipped going to the actual Granite Lakes, after watching a couple much much much younger than us literally leaped across the raging creek on wet rocks. Of course they already had soaking wet feet from postholing, where we were tromping with snowshoes.

Lots of these benchs down low. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Lower small crossings were better groomed than upper crossings. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Upper crossings are less groomed. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Northwest Spring snowshoeing is a challenge. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Jack be nimble, jack be quick. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Gotta be young and nimble and already have wet feet for this crossing. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

John brought a saw and did a bunch of trail work. I regretted leaving my saw at home, but my pack was just too darn heavy. Props to John.

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 John at work.

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 John, finishing one of his clearing projects.

In the lost and found department ... Anyone lose these?

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 Did any lose this? :-)

Artifact? Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

John did lose his wallet, out of his pants pockets. By a small miracle and much luck, I found it along this stretch.

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 Land of Lost Wallets....where I found John's.

It does look like they took the forethought to put up an Angry Hiker Proof cairn on the trail.

Angry Hiker proof cairn. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Snow started at 3000 feet and going by the hip deep postholing we were seeing, we were glad to have carted our snowshoes for 4 miles to use them.

John at upper Thompson lake fork. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

To whine about this trail, you really need to be a "glass half empty" person, IMHO.

Granite creek from the trail. Lakes trail 5/11/13

Granite creek from the trail. Lakes trail 5/11/13

Granite creek from the trail. Lakes trail 5/11/13

Granite creek from the trail. Lakes trail 5/11/13

John crossing the bridge. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

John on the bridge. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Looking up Granite creek from the trail. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Granite creek from log bridge. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

A well done bridge. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Lone Trillium on hike. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Waterfall grid, Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Nice views from the trail. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

The wall, across from the trail. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Signage. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Lower fork to Thompson Lake, near Granite Lakes. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Onward to lakes... for some. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

John on snowshoe roller coaster. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

John heading up. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

View down upper trail. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

view from Thompson fork. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Thompson lake fork. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Lunch boot shot. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

John heading down Patches. Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 Feeling fuzzy

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 Spring buds

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 Verticals with falls.

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 Another angle on the new bridge over Granite creek.

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 Nicely located lower bench with a view.

Granite Lakes trail 5/11/13 Blue flowers

Give that terraforming a mere year or two, and you won't even notice the original rawness of it, based on my experience of freshly cut-in mtn bike trails. But I won't argue with folks that say the trail is garbage....just stay away please.

[whitebark]

I'm certainly not one of the haters. I hiked up the Granite Creek trail a week ago, and found I rather liked the road-to-trail conversion work that was done on it. The guy who did the conversion was a true artist with the backhoe.

[tigermn]

Other than the few hours the wallet was lost and the point where I postholed one leg through into a hole around some rocks with snow melting below (I think I was too focused on looking for the wallet to pay attention to where I was walking on the way down), it was a fun trip. Would have liked to try and push on to the cabin (or the lake) but for many reasons it wasn't in the cards on this day.

[The Angry Hiker]

[tigermn]

[The Angry Hiker]

Don't get me started on Mailbox. I was there the weekend before last and I easily passed 200 people in the first mile down from the summit. I've never seen anything like it, on any I-90 hike. At one point, the trail was clogged with a group of at least 30 people, just standing around like turds waiting for someone to come along with a plunger. Flip flops and tennis shoes were everywhere. On 3 separate occasions, I had to direct people back to the trail after they missed a switchback and started wandering off into the woods. Whoever had the bright idea to put another trail on that mountain had their head up their wazoo. The last thing Mailbox needs is more morons. I'm surprised SAR doesn't have a permanent HQ up there.

[tigermn]

[The Angry Hiker]

I imagine it looked like Alki Beach. Whenever someone asked me how much snow was up there, I told them they wouldn't see any snow under all the people. It was so much nicer back when people couldn't find the trailhead.

[cascadeclimber]

[boot up]

I don't suppose the current situation of no signage at the Granite lakes trailhead will continue. After they put up a sign with "lakes" in the name, then the trail will really go the hell in a handbasket, being swarmed by people, and parking will stretch for miles along the dusty Mid fork road. I feel more "coralled" going up a unrelenting road blasted straight up a mountain than a meandering trail. I was suprised to see so much windfall on such a new trail (part of my decision for leaving the saw home) and I notice that people were already tromping down alternate routes around the naturally placed windfall, versus the manmade meanderings. John compared tracks from doing the straight road walk to doing all this meandering. To the point down low, with most of the curviness, where the shortcut trail cuts in, he go 2.70 miles vs the old 2.66 miles. Hard to believe all these Hard Core Hikers are whining about that difference. But again, I say.....yes, let's continue to bad mouth this trail....pleeeeez. Note, there is no "no bicycles" sign and it is not Wilderness, so mtn bikes are not poaching and are perfectly legal at this time. If this is too tough for someone to mtn bike, and they need that straight graded logging road, then they are not real mtn bikers, but are hikers that happen to be riding a mtn bike occasionally. It is ideal mtn bike single track. Curvy enough to be interesting and encourage keeping speed down lower, but good sight lines. Good brakes required, as it should be. Just enough technical to make it interesting. Of course if you are a hiker just wanting to use a bike to get further up a trail faster....that is a different story.

[cascadeclimber]

There is a subset of the hiking population that accepts a flatter, longer trail as 'easier' and prefers such. I don't quibble their opinion and offer that there is a plethora of trails suitable for such folks, including new Mt. Si, Cascade Pass, Ingalls Pass, Snow Lake, new West Tiger 3, Chirico, etc. And just the same, there is a group for whom hiking is largely training for other activities, like mountaineering, triathlons, etc. I count myself in this group and we tend to do a lot of vertical and look for steep, 'unfixed' trails, like the old Mailbox trail, the old Si trail, the old Kamikaze falls trail, etc. For my part, a trail made of crush rock, placed rocks (Chirico), and/or rock-hard dirt play hell on knees and ankles (he says nursing yet another dislocation courtesy the poorly placed rocks on Chirico); I much prefer mud to a sidewalk-like substrate. I like to believe there's plenty of terrain out there to accommodate both (generalized) user groups, but of late it seems like some folks have decided that there's only one sort of 'good' trail, and have been 'fixing' all the 'bad' trails that some of us actually prefer and seek out. Purposely introducing meanders into otherwise direct routes will certainly please some, but not all users. Sorry for the threadjacking!!

[tigermn]

[boot up]

[cascadeclimber]

[ranger rock]

Nice bridges.. looks like they did a better job there than they do in the Olympics. In the Olypmics they rip out all the car bridges and do not replace them with foot bridges no matter how big the river is. I'm sure it's better than Mount Si anyway...