Granite Chief, Needle Peak & Lyon Peak

This was a repeat trip for me in one important way: I'd tried Granite Chief the year before and gotten shut down by snow still lingering on the route. Coming back and actually standing on top this time felt like unfinished business closed out, and getting it done as part of a three-peak day made it even better.

The approach couldn't be easier to find — you park right at the Squaw Valley ski resort, in the big lot by the village, and walk up the Granite Chief Trail from there. It climbs through forest and meadow along a creek before hitting the Pacific Crest Trail, and from there it's a short push up a use-trail to the summit of Granite Chief at 9,006 feet, the high point of the whole wilderness area named after it.

Granite Chief is where most people turn around, but the ridge running west from the summit is what makes this a three-peak day instead of one. It's all off-trail from there — down through a boulder field on the back side, then along an exposed ridgeline to Needle Peak, the more technical of the three with a class 3 summit block that's basically a basalt pinnacle standing up out of the ridge. A short scramble gets you to the top, where an old USFS survey marker is bolted into the rock, stamped with the peak's name. From there it's on to Lyon Peak, a short traverse further west that only asks for some easy talus-hopping to reach the summit — no drama, just more of that same big, open ridge-top view in every direction.

The whole area between the three summits is genuinely beautiful — a small alpine lake tucked into a bowl below the ridge, patches of snow still hanging on in the shadier gullies even in July, and Squaw Valley and Lake Tahoe both visible off in the haze depending on which way you're facing. Somewhere up there I also came across an old, rusted-out coffee can wedged into the summit rocks — clearly someone's long-abandoned register, decades old by the look of it. Three peaks, one ridge, and one snow-year failure finally put to rest.