Joey and an overnight to Granite Cabin Hitch

Sunset at Granite Park

The Highline Trail.

Joey checking out the clouds from the
Highline Trail.

Bullhead lake from Swiftcurrent
lookout.

September brought Joey, another friend from college to the park to visit.  I had a four day break but Jeff was on hitch so Joey and I decided to hike up and camp out with him at his hitch.  We took the Highline Trail to Granite Park.  The highline follows the Continental Divide (which is a cliffy wall in this area named the Garden Wall) and is one of the more popular trails in the park.  It's a high alpine trail for a fairly flat 7.6 miles to Granite Park.  There is an amazing chalet at Granite Park that was built in 1914 by the Great Northern Railway.  You can stay at the chalet but we camped with the trail crew.  We stayed for two nights and hiked up to Swiftcurrent Fire Lookout on our second day there.  The Lookout is a tiny building built in 1936 and is one of a chain of manned fire lookout posts within the park.  It was closed for the season when we got there but the views were still pretty amazing.  From Granite Park, you climb about 700 feet and 1 mile to Swiftcurrent Pass and then head up another 1300ft and 1.2 miles to get to the lookout.  From there we continued down the Swiftcurrent Valley to find Jeff and his crew, who were working on the trail above Swiftcurrent Falls.

The view north from Swiftcurrent
lookout

Swiftcurrent Mountain fire lookout.

Jeff's crew working on the
Swiftcurrent Trail, above
Swiftcurrent falls.

Heading up toward Swiftcurrent Valley
toward Swiftcurrent Pass.

Coming down from the lookout.

Swiftcurrent Pass trail