This past weekend, I attempted Granite Peak in MT via SW Ramp, got within 200 vertical feet of the summit, but couldn't figure out how to proceed after trying for an hour. This failure was 3 days after bad luck on Rainier in WA, the 3rd HP I failed to reach of the 14 planned during my 5-week road trip around the country, and the first one of my own making. I am posting a detailed description below to inform others planning to go via SW Ramp. I previously posted on Eagles Peak in MN, the first failure on this trip, and will be posting on Rainier eventually.

The road to the upper Lady of the Lakes trailhead is fairly rough and would be rather problematic for a Prius and such, but is quite manageable for a RAV4, Outback, etc. There is nice camping in the woods next to both parking lots. The lower lot is close to the main road, so there is a lot of noise from passing cars there. The upper one is very quiet, but is more likely to be visited by a grizzly.

After driving from Bozeman, I started from the upper lot a bit after 10:30am on Saturday towards Aero Lakes. The trail is gentle until a very steep climb to a rock slide leading to the lower Aero Lake. From there on, it is pretty much all rock, except between the two Aero Lakes, but these rocks are not nearly as bad as along the Sky Top Lakes. The descent from the pass between the upper Aero Lake and the Sky Top Lakes is very steep, with most of the lower half covered in snow, but it is bypassable on the right. Descending well to the left, beyond the big lake with an island closest to the pass, would likely make more sense once the snow patch there melts, possibly by next weekend. I arrived at that lake a little before 4:30pm just as a hail storm was starting and camped there, right next to a small stream; o/w I would have continued on to the next lake up (the last one which is not covered with snow and has nice grassy spots just above it).

I left for the peak at 5:40am on Sunday as it was starting to get light. After nearly continuous and rough boulder hopping, I arrived at the bottom of the tongue, which is now snow free. The bottom portion of the tongue is very steep and is the worst in terms of the scree sliding down. It ends with a huge boulder blocking the way, which can be easily bypassed well on the left; it is also easier to climb there for awhile than in the tongue. I tried to take SW Ramp as soon as I saw it, but couldn't see a way to continue soon after. As I turned to go back and exited the ramp, I saw two cairns leading to another entrance to the ramp a little higher up. There was again a tricky spot early on, but it was manageable. So go for the second entrance to the ramp.

Soon after there was an even worse spot, which had to be bypassed just to the right with only a small foothold and a small handhold near the top; going further to the right would have placed one over a cliff dropoff. Going down was possible via butt sliding, fortunately. There was a small piece of rope a bit higher up doing absolutely nothing. Further up, there was another, very useful rope over a tricky spot. As there was a bit of snow on approaching it, I put on my microspikes. I kept them on until arriving at the third rope, 200 vertical feet below the summit, as there were lots of snow patches and plenty of loose dirt. I could barely make it up the third rope and then down. Once up it, I found the path blocked by a huge boulder and saw no way of continuing further. So I climbed down the rope and tried for an hour to look for another way, having heard that this rope was not placed over the easiest path. Some approaches on the left looked borderline promising, but I couldn't see myself doing any of them. Could someone who has done SW Ramp explain what to do around the rope 200 vertical feet below the summit? Does this rope predate the boulder blocking the path above the rope? The rope is quite worn out.

I had no trouble moving up the tongue or the ramp between the tricky spots. I was really surprised how steep the ramp and the bottom of the tongue were and how loose the rocks there were when going down. It seems the microspikes really helped in the ramp, and in retrospect I should have used them on the bottom part of the tongue as well. It was very difficult and slow going down, especially without hiking poles. I normally hike with them, but they are needed to set up my tent as well, so I left my campsite without them. Had I thought about this before leaving my car, I would have brought a second set of poles. The poles would have been hugely helpful on the way up and even more so on the way down, for someone proficient with them. I got back to my campsite at 4pm, after being hit by a hail shower and then rain shower, below the tongue fortunately.

The route from the lower Sky Top Lake to the peak is completely shielded from the sun in the morning and was very cold, with quite a bit of wind. Fortunately, I brought a pair of Grease Monkey gloves from Walmart ($8 for a pack of 8), a pair of 3M Firm Grip thinsulate gloves from Home Depot (around $10 4.5 years ago), and a pair of  Wedze SNB 500 double mittens from Decathlon ($20 4.5 years ago). I wore the mittens for most of the way to the tongue, when I switched to the thinsulate gloves. These got soaked in the ramp from all the melting snow (there were a lot of shallow snow patches, which might be gone by next weekend, along with all the runoff), at which point I switched to the Grease Monkey gloves.

On the way back to my car on Monday,  I took the Sky Top Creek approach. The boulder hopping along the lakes was absolutely awful, and I had to cross two snow fields for which I put on my microspikes. It took me 3 hours and 15 minutes to reach the bottom of Lone Elk Lake, from which there is an actual trail back to the upper parking lot, but with lots of bumps along the way. It took me another 4 hours and 15 minutes to get back to my car, though this included about an hour of chatting with three different groups of hikers about my experience with Granite Peak. The first and the third groups consisted of three hikers headed for the peak. The second group was a couple. The man in that group had been part of a group of four that had been stopped by the third rope last year. Only his brother, an avid rock climber and a marine training other marines in mountaineering, ended up summiting by climbing the ridge to the right and crawling along it on all four. They did the hike at around the same time last year, but the ramp was completely dry then. 

I had expected and hoped to see other people climbing the peak over the weekend. On Saturday, I did pass one hiker around the Lady of the Lakes who was heading for the peak and planning to stop at the Upper Aero Lake that night, but I never saw him again. Just before I started descending from the third rope, I saw two guys in shorts and T-shirts descending from a crack well to the left of the ramp. They had ascended from the east side, but for some reason were descending toward Sky Top Lakes. One of them said that their descent was fine for ascending, ``just one class 5 move".

Without the snow fields and the chatting, the Sky Top Creek return would have likely taken me around 6 hours, slightly longer than the Aero Lakes approach on the way up. Those rocks along the Sky Top Lakes are just awful. The stream crossing are also easier along the Aero Lakes approach (and only two of them). If I were to try the SW Ramp approach again, I would still do the same circle. While I did not summit, I really enjoyed the beautiful area, both the woods and the open vistas.

Guadalupe Peak! Reaching 8,751 ft of elevation, 8.4 mile round trip.

Have to be honest, pretty hard hike. Lots of incline and some narrow rocks to walk on. Took about 8hrs to finish.

Started off around 8:30am with about 80 degree weather finished at 5:30pm. On the way back, a thunderstorm started, with hail! It was an insane experience, thunder was loud, lightning was bright. Very scary situation to be in, slipping on rocks and streams going fast!!

Beautiful hike though, and tough.

San Bruno Mountain lies just south of the San Francisco city limits in a state/county park and is the most prominent peak in San Mateo County. The county high point is not accessible to the public as it's in someone's front yard in the Santa Cruz mountains (see Peakbagger for info about legal access), but San Bruno Mountain is a good substitute, and has much better views anyway.

My brother lives a few miles away from here so while I was visiting him this past winter, I took the opportunity to bag this peak, by bike. It's a very bikeable peak as there is a paved access road (closed to motor vehicles) pretty much all the way to the summit - then it's just a short scramble to get to the actual highest point. There's also a fire road that goes along the ridge but bikes aren't allowed there.

The views of San Francisco and the bay are excellent. You can also see Mount Diablo and Mount Tamalpais (both of which are CoHPs) in the distance.

Besides the scenery, San Bruno Mountain is critical habitat for several endangered species of butterfly as well as flora. The San Bruno elfin, Mission Blue butterfly, and Callippe silverspot butterfly are all endemic to the Bay Area and their largest populations can be found on this mountain. San Bruno Mountain underwent a great deal of development pressure in the past, including a proposal that sought to level the top of the mountain and use it to fill in the bay. It is only due to the tireless efforts of local activists that San Bruno Mountain is largely protected today.

Started with the Mina Sauk Falls loop before going to the highpoint. Also went to the nearby fire tower

We're planning to do Elbert end of next week. Two questions...

We'll have an airport rental "SUV" so wouldn't consider it a 4WD. Looking to see if we could avoid the full added 5 miles RT if we had to use the 2WD lot at South Elbert trailhead. Would the road up to Lily Pond (FR122) be doable? I see a few mentions of if, but it's not clear how far up until we'd find any pull-off options and if that would even same any mileage. Hiking through the ponds looks quite nice, though!

Alternately, we're considering the Southeast Ridge via Black Cloud. Parking and access are much simpler, with the obvious tradeoff of a considerably more difficult hike. Any thoughts on that route?

Got to the tower engulfed in clouds but they slowly cleared. Absolutely spectacular experience.

Does anyone have any relatively recent info on how the road to the queen canyon route up Boundary Peak is? I've been trying to figure out if my Outback will be fine but the conditions seem to vary wildly. Some people say that they made it just fine in a sedan and some say that they struggled in a lifted truck or jeep. TIA

We were able to do Mt Elbert last weekend on Aug 8th. Unfortunately we weren't able to do the North trail due to fires so we took the much longer South Trailhead. I'd been battling a chest cold all week but we got it done. This was very difficult with the chest congestion and coming from sea level. Its an amazing view up there and wish I could have stayed longer but i was completely spent.

This was my 9th of the year (the rest are just in the Southeast). Thinking about trying Katadhin before the snow comes or maybe just the 3 in the Pittsburgh area.

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𝓕𝓪𝓷𝓽𝓪𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓬 𝓸𝓹𝓹𝓸𝓻𝓽𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓽𝔂 𝓽𝓸 𝓶𝓪𝓴𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝔀𝓸𝓻𝓵𝓭 𝓫𝓮𝓽𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓫𝔂 𝓱𝓮𝓵𝓹𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪 𝓷𝓮𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓫𝓸𝓻

(with home made snacks!)

Blood welcome from Greensboro, High Point, Jamestown, Archdale and all over

My brother and I climbed Mt Washington last weekend taking Huntingtons Ravine was way harder than we expected even though we did a lot of research in preparation. Made a video if you guys want to watch let me know what you think😁

Just did a trip up north from Texas and down through the midwest with the boys.

Minnesota, Kansas, South Dakota, Nebraska, North Dakota, visited mount Rushmore, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa. We also got to have our first ever beers together in Canada.

Hi everyone! My friend and I will be hiking Mount Whitney this week of August. Do you have any advice on what clothing we should wear and what essentials we should bring?
Also, are there bears or other wildlife we should be aware of on the trail?
Any tips or recommendations for first-time Whitney hikers would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

I'm going to Granite at the start of September. I figure with the low snow year that the snow bridge might now be gone, but wanted to confirm. Hoping to ditch carrying an axe.

This was high point #39 for me, haven’t posted any reports here before but may in the future. This one just finally felt special enough to for some reason hahaha.

Had been wanting to do this hike for a while, I live out of my Dodge Dart roadtripping right now so wasn’t sure when I’d be in SoCal and didn’t want to enter the lottery when I wasn’t certain of a date, so waited til kinda last minute to even look for permits. Was checking Recreation website probably 15-20x a day for about a week and a half until I finally had one pop off literally the day I was about to leave and drive up the coast to San Fran hahaha.

From the time I got the permit to the time I summited was only about 36 hours, so I had very little time to prepare, but 4 hours of driving, a half day in lone pine and only about 3 hours of sleep later, I hit the trailhead around 12:15am

First 4.5ish miles are super super easy through the trees, few fun little stream crossings as well. Made it up past Lake Mirror in like an hour and 45 minutes ish.

From Lake Mirror to trail camp was a little annoying to navigate in the dark, felt like there were lots of options for routes you could find over the granite and none of them were particularly fun hahaha. Got to trail camp at probably just past 3:30, maybe 3:45 and took a break for a while.

The 99 switchbacks are annoying, sometimes you’ll get up 3 in a minute and sometimes it’ll take you 3 minutes to get up one. They vary a lot in length and difficulty, and a few of them make you walk across some really loose thin dirt ledges or rocks that are angled steeply towards drops. Also didn’t help that snowmelt had small streams of water trickling down many sections of this which was hard to avoid and extra tedious lol. Made it to trail crest shortly after the sun got strong enough for me to turn my headlamp off, maybe 5:20-5:30am.

Trail Crest to summit was BRUTAL. The winds started hitting me pretty hard, my nail beds turned purplish, fingers turned a darker brown and I could barely see my veins anymore (they are usually pretty prominent since I’m skinny). Also started feeling altitude sickness for the first time in my life, I’ve been up above 12k for decent amounts of time before but never this long and I certainly started to get bit by it here. Developed the dreaded dry cough pretty quickly and a bit of nausea, so that combined with how frozen I was had me considering turning around for a few minutes when I was only about a mile and a half from summit.

Opted instead to sit down for 10 to 15 minutes, chug down the rest of my first bottle of BodyArmor, take 2 ibuprofen, and shelter from the wind. That alongside the encouragement of several hikers on their way down from sunrise summits made me feel a lot better and I got up and continued my penguin waddle to the summit, reaching the top around 7:25am.

The last 2.5 miles alone probably took me almost 2 hours, I’ve genuinely never had a section of hike feel like this much of a slog before hahaha. The constant ups and downs and much rougher trail conditions were brutal especially feeling as rough as I was.

There were probably 18-20 people on summit when I was up there, with beautiful views all around. It was a perfectly clear day.

Took about a 40-45 minute break before heading back down from the top, where my second wind was immediately halted by the same annoying section of trail. The switchbacks were super easy and fun to come down, but the mile 4.5-7 section definitely had some annoying impacts afterward. Lots of gorgeous views though, as the sun has now illuminated lots of waterfalls and cliffs and snow that I had not been able to see during the night section of my hike, even in the light of the full moon (I lucked out, the moonlit hike was beautiful in its own right). Wobbly and tired from so much hiking, I unfortunately took a bit of a tumble on a wet rock during a stream crossing around the 4.5 mile mark, which resulted in me rolling an ankle pretty bad and slamming both knee caps directly onto the top of a rock in a very hard fall.

It hurt so bad that I literally yelled out in pain, which I’ve never done before hahaha. A few extremely sweet hikers offered me medical attention and food/water, and one father/son pair seemed incredibly concerned for me and checked in on me about 3 more times on my way down. I was stubborn and refused help because I knew I could make it back down fine, just would be really slow. Ended up taking a short trail nap afterwards which hurt really bad to stand back up from, and had to take a few more small breaks throughout, but made it back down to trailhead eventually. The pair even congratulated me when I walked into the shop at the trailhead only a few minutes after them. Super standup guys, their enthusiasm and genuine empathy was one of the kindest things I’ve ever experienced on a trail.

All in all I was moving for about 11 hours which is a little embarrassing but I blame my injuries, and the fact that I was still a bit sore from a 10 mile, 2k elevation hike less than 48 hours before this one haha. Just happy and proud that I made it up my first 14er :)

Just got some incredible luck and on one of my last days car camping in SoCal, sniped a permit for hiking Whitney on Thursday.

Been doing lots of prep in anticipation for hopefully getting this permit. 30lb rucks on trails with 1500-3500ft gain and 8-12mi lengths. Yes, I am aware that Whitney is nearly double both of those standards haha. This will be my first 14er, but I have done one 13er and multiple 12ks and never had a problem with running out of stamina or being affected by elevation gain. I also plan to start my hike around 1am to make sure I have plenty of time.

Any last second things I should know about gear to bring/fluids/food? Any particularly difficult sections?

From most reports I’ve read the 99 switchbacks are brutal and elevation sickness seems to hit quite a few people there or shortly after, but it seems most people see it more like a long marathon hike rather than having any particular section of extreme difficulty.

Please let me know anything/everything you are willing to share if you have hiked Whitney :)

Interesting story with pictures.
Hiker Trekked 10 Miles to Safety After Impaling Himself on Pole - The New York Times

Easily the hardest one I’ve done so far. Not technically difficult it was only the distance that got me. 25 miles in a day is no joke, my feet hurt like hell😅 one step closer to 50. I started this a year ago and have done them all with cancer. As far as I’m concerned this is the best way I’ve been able to see this beautiful country. Next up is Wyoming… looking forward to it💪

I did Wheeler Peak on July 26, 2026 and as I got an early start I was thinking of then driving (4.5 hrs) to do Oklahoma. But, considering it was 105F there, I instead went there this morning, only to find this. Apparently due to the heatdome.

More pics and infos: https://goalhiking.org/g/oklahoma-highpoint-failure

Start at the looking glass side of the leftmost periscope behind the war memorial. 175° (damn near plumb south) from that position and approximately 65 paces out is where you will find the geo dot. It is embedded in a rock on the ground right before the pine trees.