After attending the JavaOne conference, and after spending a little time in San Francisco seeing the sights, Jenn and I decided to head out into the California Wilderness, hoping to spend a couple of days doing some challenging and scenic hiking.
The real challenge, however, seemed to be the weather. A large low-pressure system was moving into all areas of California, it seemed, over the next few days. We researched for the least affected area of the state, hoping to find a little break in the weather that would allow some dry hiking. I contemplated the northern and southern Sierra Nevada, as well as the mountains of Northern California (which is where I'd wanted to go initially). I even contemplated ditching the mountains entirely and heading to the deserts - but they were just a little too far away given the amount of time we had.
In the end, I chose the original objective - the Trinity Alps area of Northern California - because the weather didn't look any better anywhere else.
We drove up from San Francisco on Interstate-5, through periods of blinding rain, stopping in the city of Redding, where we found a motel for the night. The weather forecast continued to look bleak, but we were here and figured it was better to get exercise and be wet than no exercise and be dry. The next morning we drove for about an hour, westward, into the Shasty-Trinity region, and finally up the small gravel road to the trailhead (the road is quite passable to most cars, BTW). The rain was on-and-off, and each time it was off we held our collective breath: would it hold for good this time?
To be honest with you, given the continuous and heavy wet weather recently and today, I figured we had a less than 50% chance of success, since there was a good possibility of more heavy rain, poor snow conditions, uncrossable watercourses, etc. I just wasn't too optimistic.
Granite Peak Trail Trailhead
The trailhead was deserted (not surprising), and unsigned. The track started off as a nice wide pine-needle carpeted path, climbing fairly steeply right from the start. The forest was very pleasant and open, with nice, tall stately trees and not a lot of unsightly underbrush. It drizzled on and off.
The very nice trail continued to ascend, steeply, and windingly. It wasn't long before the wide track narrowed down to a typical single-path trail. The footing was excellent and the trail was not muddy, even with the very wet conditions. So far, so good.
Entering Trinity Wilderness
I'd read about the snow conditions, and knew that we'd reach significant snow at some point. Jenn and I placed our bets on at what altitude we would hit continuous snow. The snow appeared, discontinuously, in the high 4000s, and became continuous by 5500 feet. And there was a lot of it! We could see that even down here it was many feet in depth. Fortunately, the snow was solid and offered good footing. In fact, it even allowed us to cross a couple of noisy streams that may have been problematic otherwise.
Climbing out of the trees
With the continuous snow cover, I had to be more careful about following the trail (which was buried under the snow, of course). Mostly I followed the general route that the trail took, and I'm sure in places I wasn't over the exact trail. Still, by looking at the map and the lay of the land, a reasonable way up was fairly obvious.
We crossed a few open avalanche chutes and climbed up steep, thinly forested slopes, up to the crest of an eastern ridge of Granite Peak, where we had a snack break. At this point I was more optimistic about our chances of making it, since we were most of the way up, the snow was not too bad, and the weather was holding.
Now on the ridge, it was a matter of climbing up a 25 degree snow-slope right up to the summit. We had the ice axes out and it was fun to practice snow movement on the easy slope. We were careful to stay away from the sharper northern crest of the ridge - who knows if cornices lurk! the weather was more-or-less socked-in, with a few bright patches and a glimpse of blue here and there. There were no real views to be had, but we imagined how awesome they would be if it was clear.
