Trials & Tribulations on Granite

History from Montana's highest peak. 

During the Pleistocene epoch, a thick ice cap formed on a high plateau where the Beartooth Mountains are located today. Ice dispersed from a high point in three glaciers flowing in different directions. Gouging a valley to the north was the Huckleberry Creek glacier, which scoured its upper cirque to become one of Greater Yellowstone’s most impressive alpine walls today—Granite Peak’s north face. On the southwest and southeast sides of the mountain, the Sky Top and Granite Creek glaciers excavated giant scoops of the plateau, combining to form Granite Peak’s mile-wide southern escarpment, which is a jumble of snow couloirs, rock arêtes, and chimneys.

Spanning decades, numerous tries were required before the formidable rock pile was summited by western pioneers. Edward Douglas—a USGS surveyor—made the first known attempt to climb the peak starting from Cooke City in September 1889. Details about the adventure are scant, aside from a third-hand account written by a supervisor on the Beartooth National Forest: Picking the main ridge on the south slope as the most feasible route, it is reported that after some most difficult climbing they reached a point within 200 feet of the top where they encountered vertical cliffs and could proceed no farther. Inclement weather which followed made any further attempts impracticable.

Over the next 34 years, at least six other parties attempted the peak from the southwest—all failing. Then, in the early 1900s, Billings mountaineer Fred Inabnit and various partners made at least five unsuccessful attempts on the mountain’s southwest face, coming within several hundred feet of the top twice, in 1922 and 1923. Both times, Inabnit was forced to turn around at unsurmountable walls. On the latter expedition, however, three other members of his party broke off and clambered their way up a different route—the east ridge—and would make history by recording the first ascent of Granite Peak.

Find the full story of the climbers’ ascent, along with detailed route descriptions and local beta, in Thomas Turiano’s book, Select Peaks of Greater Yellowstone. It should be required reading for any serious hiker, climber, or mountaineer in the area.