Granite Mountain 8,920′
Great Basin Desert
Total Time: 2:30
Distance: 3.4 miles
Elevation Gain: 1500′
Crux: Class 3
Companions: Holly and Avery
Trailhead: BLM fire roads, no services
For my family birthday hike this year, I wanted to finally climb Glass Mountain, a prominent 11,000′ summit on the east side of the 395 with sweeping views of the Sierra Crest. Featured on the Sierra Club Desert Peak section list, it’s a fairly straightforward hike from the northeast, a use trail climbing about 2,000′ in less than two miles from a decent dirt road. It was over an hour from Mammoth, the main reason we hadn’t done the hike yet, but with snow covering much of the Sierra, it seemed like a good time to get it done. Although the nearby White Mountains had plenty of snow, Glass Mountain looked dry from town, and we headed out early. But as we rounded Sagehen Summit on the 120 East, the northern slopes of Glass Mountain came into view, with plenty of snow down to at least 8,000′, well below the level of the road. Had I been alone I would have probably continued, but with a wife that doesn’t love snow and a toddler strapped to my back, I immediately decided it was a bad idea. I didn’t really have a Plan B, and just figured we would flip around and try and salvage the morning near Mono or June Lakes. But Holly had enough service on her phone to find a hike on nearby Granite Mountain on Alltrails. I was vaguely familiar with Granite Mountain- it was the last chapter of the Mammoth Rock Climbing Guide but knew little of it beyond that. But with no other options, we drove a bit further on Highway 120 before turning left into the Granite Mountain Basin on BLM land.
There were a two campers parked off the road, but the area felt quite desolate, with a canyon of featured rock to the north, and the snow covered summits of the White Mountains and Glass Mountains to the south. With Alltrails open, we started down and old road that quickly deteriorated into an overgrown wash, although still easy enough to follow with shin high sparse desert scrub. We quickly realized that there was actually no trail to follow (classic Alltrails…) and this would be a cross country adventure with really no beta to rely on. This made me fairly nervous, I had never taken Avery on a hike that I had never thoroughly researched beforehand. But we needed her to take a nap in the carrier that morning regardless, so we decided to continue hiking up canyon to at least reach the saddle west of the summit.
The granite walls closed in on the wash, incredibly featured with huecos and ribs of rock, although I would learn later that the climbing area was on a seperate feature to the west, this section almost completely undeveloped for climbing. We were a few hundred feet below the saddle having climbed nearly 1,000′ when Avery dozed off in the carrier behind me. The saddle was quite broad and looking up at the summit, it looked like there were any number of ramps and gullies that could get you to the top.
It was steep and very sandy, and I doubted my ability to maintain any kind of rhythm to keep her asleep (saying a lot considering I kept her asleep on White Wing Mountain and Crater Mountain nearby). So after a brief discussion, Holly and I decided to take turns, with me heading up first to see how long it would actually take and the overall difficulty. With 700′ between myself and the summit, and a roundtrip goal of 30 minutes, I charged up the sandy slopes, aiming for pockets of third class rock whenever possible and avoid the loose sand. There was a series of chimneys splitting the cliff bands half way up from the saddle, and I found solid class 3 rock, needing to traverse north on ledges when the cliff became unbroken higher up.
From here I hit what seemed to be the standard scrambling route to the summit, with an occasional duck marking the way up gullys to the high point, taking exactly 20 minutes from the saddle. After signing into the register and taking a few pictures, I dropped off the summit.
Initially, I followed the same line of descent but kept further to the north lower down to stick with the ducked use trail, although this was quickly lost. I made it down to the saddle a bit before 11 AM, Avery haven woken up just a few minutes prior.
I was more than happy to hang out at the saddle and feed Avery lunch while Holly headed up, but she was content to call it a morning and head back to the car. The sandy cross country made for an easy descent off the saddle back into the wash, taking under an hour to drop the 1,000′ back to the BLM road. From there we headed back west, grabbing a drink at June Lake Brewing before a birthday dinner at Convict Lake that night.
