This highpoint had a ceremonious quality to it: Edward Earl, a climber from San Diego, would be attempting his 58th and final California county highpoint. His friend Adam the Chef and I tagged along to celebrate with him, should he (and we) be successful. There was no reason to believe we would not. Granite Chief is a mostly bare granite block overlooking the Squaw Valley Ski Area, home of the 1960 Winter Olympics. I met Adam at the Reno airport the previous evening, and we drove toward the Squaw Valley area, arriving at about 9 p.m.; we both got lucky and found Edward camped at a nearby campsite, where we proceeded to wake him up and annoy the nearby campers, too! However, we were all crashed by about 11 p.m. The next morning, we drove to the trailhead and started our hike right about 6:30 a.m. in pleasant clear weather.

The trail starts behind the fire station along Squaw Valley's main road, and sort of splits and braids with other trails as it slowly gains elevation up a small canyon. We took one wrong turn and found ourselves hiking along a swollen creek. Fortunately we discovered our error fast and backtracked to a junction, where a sign pointed the way to Granite Chief. How the three of us missed that sign going in is beyond me. Time lost was about 20 minutes. Not too bad. The trail gains steadily up the forested canyon walls, then starts a long traverse with some up and down as it heads toward the canyon headwall and main summit ridge. Periodically the views were expansive and we could see the summit off in the distance, other times we were amid huge trees. There were also some rocky areas where cairns marked the way. The scenery changed often enough to keep it interesting. We all made good time and in about 2 hours had covered about 4.5 miles. Small patches of snow started to infringe on the trail, eventually growing very large and often forcing us to make educated guesses as to the proper direction of travel.

Eventually the snowdrifts simply forced us to find our own way, but since we were very close, this was not a problem. We descended into a marsh, then ascended up the headwall below a skilift to gain the saddle just east of the summit. This headwall was covered in snow and totally covered our trail, so we ascended via a steep series of rock outcrops and short, steep snow inclines. Only one move on the rocks might have approached class-3, and the snow traversing wasn't too bad as long as we kicked steps, and we made the saddle with no problems. From here it was about 300 more feet up the ridge amid snow, trees and rocks to the top. We picked our own routes through this mix and eventually reached the top about 3.5 hours after starting. The summit is topped by a big rock, and Edward deliberately waited before tagging it, as Adam read a prepared speech and I acted as witness and well-wisher to Edward. Then, the big moment for Edward: California was his- he had reached the highest point in all 58 California counties! We congratulated him, ate lunch, snapped photos and took in the views, with Lake Tahoe dominating to the east, and a multitude of peaks to our north, west and south. Freel Peak, which I did the day before, was off to the southeast. This was Adam's 50th California county highpoint, well on his way to completion. I came in a measly third: this was my 28th.

After nearly an hour we started down, but had no interest in re-negotiating the snowy bits we passed coming up. Instead, we descended to the saddle and ascended a subpeak to Granite Chief's east, and walked down service roads toward a tram complex that we could see off in the distance. We could see a pool and hear music. The temptation was too much and we took the tram down (for free) to the parking area, drastically cutting our time and distances down (and wear and tear on my knees). Coming up was about 5.5 miles and about 3,000 feet of gain, whereas going down was about 2 miles and maybe 1,000 feet of loss- we shaved 3 miles and about 2 hours from our time. I think trams are cool!

We said our goodbyes in the parking area. Adam and I headed into Nevada to start tackling peaks out there, while Edward started back for San Diego. Congratulations to Edward for his feat; fewer than 2 dozen people (as of 2002) have climbed all 58 California counties. Adam, as it turned out, completed his 58th California county highpoint about two weeks later. Me, I don't know. Update, June 2006: Still not even close.