January 10, 2026

Start/End: Rt. 3

Peaks: Garfield (4,500')

Elevation Gain: 3,270 ft

RT Mileage: 12.73 mi

Duration: 6 hours, 2 minutes

Snow/Ice Difficulty: Grade I

For my last weekend before heading back to school, I decided to bag Garfield and check off one more winter 4,000er. Garfield was also at this point probably the only above-treeline 4,000er I had not yet seen the views from (it was socked in the last time I hiked it), and I wanted to remove that final blemish too.

I left the house around 7:10 AM, a little later than usual for me after a late night watching football and because the weather was only expected to improve throughout the day. The Gale River Loop Road is closed in winter, adding a 1.2-mile road walk each way to what is only a 10-mile hike in summer. I parked in the parking lot on Route 3 near the start of the road at 9:10, and started hiking around ten minutes later.

The road walk felt a lot longer than 1.2 miles. Occasional glimpses of the terrain above showed that Garfield was still shrouded in clouds, but the forecast was for those to clear by late morning, and I wasn't worried. The road was still nicely covered in snow even after the recent thaw, but the first 0.8 miles through the conifer glades on the Garfield Trail were strangely not. It looked like April, with icy monorail barely hanging onto the trail and almost no snowpack outside the trail.

At 1,700 ft, the trail exited the conifer glades back into the hardwood forest, and there was a solid snowpack again the rest of the way to the summit. The snow bridges over subsequent water crossings at 1,800 ft were still intact despite the thaw. The Garfield Trail begins to gently ascend the remainder of its 3.6-mile length to the northeast shoulder of Garfield where it meets the Garfield Ridge Trail, rarely exceeding a 15% grade. At 2,900 ft, the trail enters the coniferous forest and briefly plateaus. From this plateau, I was able to glimpse Garfield and Lafayette above, and both summits were now in the clear.

The snowpack was decently deep above 3,000 ft. It was also soft amidst the current thaw, and the sides of the monorail were lined with post-holes. The monorail itself was well packed, and spikes were more than enough. I post-holed many times myself stepping off the trail to let others pass. It was a busy day on the trail, and I saw close to a dozen other groups during the day.

The last 0.2 miles on the Garfield Ridge Trail were much steeper than the Garfield Trail, but the snowpack was deep and there was no exposed ice or rock. The trail breaks treeline around 50 vertical feet below the summit. I reached the foundations of the old summit fire tower (now long gone) around 12:50 PM. The views from the summit were even better than advertised, and I was able to identify 20 other 4,000ers without a shred of doubt and there were still others that I wasn't 100% sure about. I've inserted photos of many of them in the image carousel below.

After 20 minutes on the summit, I began descending. The first 0.2 miles on the Garfield Ridge Trail were definitely steep enough to glissade if I wanted to, but I chose not to given my recent ACL surgery. The rest of the descent was extremely smooth. I was back at my car at 3:20, exactly six hours after starting, and winter 4,000er #14 was in the books.