Granite Mountain Trail #261: The Long One

Granite Mountain is the biggest hike in easy reach of Prescott and the one that sorts the casual walkers from the people who came to hike. Eight miles, about 1,450 feet of climb, and a granite shelf at the top with a view across the whole basin. It also generates more bad information than any other trail here, mostly about a closure that does not do what people think it does.

The trail at a glance

The falcon closure restricts climbing, not hiking

Every year somebody cancels this hike because they read that Granite Mountain closes in spring. What closes is the cliff, to rock climbers, from 1 February to 15 July, while peregrine falcons nest on the faces. Trail #261 and the rest of the system trails stay open throughout.

The distinction matters because the falcon cliffs are the reason Granite Mountain is famous among climbers, so most of what is written about the mountain online is written by climbers, for whom the closure is the headline. For a hiker it is irrelevant. If you want to be certain in a given year, the Prescott National Forest office at (928) 777-2200 will tell you what is currently posted.

What the walk is actually like

The first mile and a half from Metate is gentle and wooded, following the drainage up toward Blair Pass. The climb starts in earnest after the junction, switchbacking up the shoulder through manzanita and scattered pine with the granite domes opening up behind you. It is steady rather than steep, and it goes on.

The trail tops out on a broad saddle and then runs out along the granite shelf on the mountain’s south side. That shelf is the destination. You can see Prescott, the Sierra Prieta, Granite Basin Lake directly below, and the Bradshaws running south toward Crown King. The true summit is a lumpy high point off in the trees behind you, with no view and no trail, and almost nobody bothers.

Practical notes

Start early in summer. The plateau has no shade and the rock radiates heat. From June through August this is a dawn hike or a bad idea.

Take more water than feels sensible. There is none on the route. Three litres each in warm weather is the number, and people still run out.

The trailhead fee is the standard forest $5, free Wednesdays, the same arrangement as Thumb Butte and Lynx Lake. Granite Basin has its own small lake and a much easier set of loops if the full mountain looks like too much on the day.

Do not count on cell signal. Coverage drops out in the drainage and comes back in patches on the plateau, which is normal for the area and covered in cell service around Groom Creek.

Granite Mountain sits at the far end of the difficulty range for the area. The other nine trails worth knowing, from a flat two-mile lake loop upward, are compared in the best hikes around Prescott.