Park County Highpoint Trip Report

Dates: August 19-20, 2005
Author: Ron Tagliapietra

We met our partners for Granite Peak at the Mystic Lake Trailhead: Sean Duffy and his friend John. Both were great rock climbers from Boise. John had spent a week climbing at Cirque of the Towers, WY, just a couple weeks before. We left the cars a little after noon and made it to the high camp on Froze-to-Death Plateau before dark.

We were hiking the last 2 miles to the summit by 7 am. John crossed the snow bridge and placed a rope for the rest of us. Then he led the class 5.4 section with all four of us on different sections of the same rope. Sean helped another party deal with that section also and they joined us for the rest of the trip. We summited about noon and another pair of guys joined us for the descent. Thus, we had three sets of ropes and 9 people. John went first and set the ropes for all six rappels, the second being the longest and for which he tied two ropes together. The snow bridge was easy on the way down and we did not use a rope. We ascended Froze-to-Death Plateau from the saddle and we reached camp about 5 pm. John and Sean had already left by then and we packed our gear and headed for the trail, which we reached by 8 pm. It got dark about 9 pm and we used headlamps to return to the car by 11 pm.

We did Granite Peak in 1.5 days because of two great rock climbers and the great weather that the Lord provided.