It was chilly at 11,300ft - there was a layer of hoar frost on my pack in the morning
But the sunrise was pretty.
Dawn light hitting Granite Peak.
I headed down to the base of the mountain, up through the talus fields, and along the base of the "the slab".
As I got to the dark rock, I turned to the right and headed up the Southwest Couloir.
The requisite summit selfie.
From the summit: Avalanche Lake, with Mt Wood in the center distance, and Froze-to-Death Plateau on the right.
From the summit: the Sky Top drainage.
From the summit: Lowary Lake and Granite Lake (on the left).
From the summit: zoomed in on Mt Wood.
After downclimbing, I went back to camp, ate lunch, packed up, and headed towards Lowary Lake. I saw a marten moving through the talus, presumably hunting pikas at this altitude. I wasn't sure about the terrain in this valley - I had tried to check it out from the summit and knew that I needed to stay to the North of the lake, but I was concerned about a headwall. But first, I needed to cross some ice - thankfully it wasn't too steep.
It turned out that there was a bit of a nasty headwall above Lowary Lake.
I thought about glissading, but the ice was hard under an inch of slush, it was steep, and the runout was into boulders. I ended up downclimbing the steep rock, and resorting to the well between the rock and ice on occasion.
A cavity under the ice.
It had been a challenging descent and I was glad to reach beautiful Lowary Lake.
This is a view back across part of the lake, toward the headwall.
Lowary Lake had a gorgeous meadow on its North shore (which could have made an excellent camp site). All around there was nothing but rock and ice. Here is a photo of Granite Lake, which is below Lowary Lake, but has no meadow.
As I headed further down, I was picking my way through immense talus fields. I began to wonder if I should have camped in that meadow.
A view back at the Southeast face of Granite Peak.
I eventually found a nice campsite in a tiny meadow that was teeming with pikas. Mount Peal looms.
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