Most of the climbing guides list the NE approach to Montana’s Highpoint, Granite Peak (12, 799′), as the standard route. This entails some Class 4/5 scrambling w/exposure and rappelling on the way down. Because of this, Granite Peak is typically listed as #4 in difficulty for State Highpoints behind Denali, Rainier and Hood. Wanting to go unguided and unroped, that route was a bit much for us so we kept researching the climb. We found a link to a great trip report that described a SW approach that promised a couple short sections of Class 3 scrambling which sounded more like what we wanted to tackle. Through one of my Denali teammates, we hooked up with a fellow Highpointer from Everett, WA, that had attempted this route about 5 years ago but got stormed off about 500′ from the summit. We felt pretty comfortable that he (Craig) would be able to lead us up to the summit… Hold that thought …

We met in Cooke City, MT on the 23rd and then ended up spending an extra day in the area as a storm passed over the mountain and dumped about 12″ of fresh snow. We started up the trail the morning of the 25th in good spirits with another Highpointer from Missouri (Kevin) joining our informal team . The trail from the Lady of the Lake trail head to our campsite in the Sky Top Lakes Basin was about 10 – 12 miles. (Although 2 members of the team had GPSs, we never could figure out the exact mileage!) The scenery was absolutely stunning with clear skies and amazing wildflowers – probably the most beautiful approach hike I have ever been on … We took a long time to make it in to camp as we were hauling pretty big packs with crampons, ice axes and the dreaded, cumbersome bear can for all our food. Luckily we never saw any bears – just a few curious mountain goats near our campsite.

We got a fairly early start up the mountain on the 26th and at that point we all realized that one of the team (Craig) was not doing well. On the approach to the mountain, he seemed to be taking more and more breaks. Once to the mountain, Joel basically had to take over as the informal leader and help find the route, which in some places was covered in snow and ice. Unfortunately all the snow from the storm earlier in the week had not melted – what was left had melted somewhat but then frozen overnight. We never ended up using crampons but were glad we all had our ice axes. There were a couple areas on the route that someone before us had left fixed lines to help get over areas that were quite slick from the ice. We probably wouldn’t have been able to navigate over those areas without then.

We all made it to the top with Joel’s route finding expertise, took a few photos and then had to head down as Craig kept getting progressively worse with Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS.) We all didn’t realize how bad he was getting until he mentioned at the summit that he felt nauseous and was contemplating pushing the SOS button on his locator beacon! That would have been a $7000 helicopter ride out … in retrospect, he shouldn’t have even attempted the climb on that day.

After what seemed like many, many hours, we made it back to camp where we cooked a couple hot meals. Craig had no energy so we tried to make him eat and rest but it was a little unclear if he ate much because he disappeared into his tent. During the night we were all woken up to pretty severe coughing and we knew we needed to get him to a lower elevation ASAP. Then the real task began … Pretty much all the gear was taken out of Craig’s pack and Joel and Kevin ended up with it – I took some of Joel’s gear to balance the loads out and off we went. It was a seemingly endless march out with all of us trading off trying to motivate Craig to move. He was so out of it, weak and tired that he would walk about 100 steps and stop. He would then fall asleep if we let him sit down. It was comical in a way as we ended up playing “Bad Cop, Good Cop” with him – Joel and Kevin yelling profanities at him, telling him they were going to throw his pack away and then me trying the nice, gentle, reassuring ploy with him. We even had another climber (Eric) join our group on the way down and he helped me out on the “Good Cop” team! Craig didn’t know which way was up or down when we were done with him. In the end, he was able to persevere and hike out on his own although we were averaging about 0.8 mph and it took over 11 hours to hike out. UGH

As a final note – we were all successful, mostly due to Joel taking over as team leader (Thanks Dear!) Craig attained State Highpoint #48, Kevin #47, Joel #11 and I am now at #18. Altitude sickness is no joke and could strike anyone at any time. I think that Craig has over 500 various summits throughout the US and had never gotten sick before – to this day we still don’t know what lead up to him getting sick but we are all glad he made it home safe and sound!