Resources
Books
The only guidebook that I'm aware of that covers the Granite Chief Wilderness reasonably well is Jeffrey Schaffer's The Tahoe Sierra, which has 10 hikes in or near the wilderness, published by Wilderness Press, ISBN 0-89997-220-9. There is probably a copy in your library, or you can order one from Wilderness Press. If you have a Google account, you can use Google Book Search and add a preview of this book to your library. Many other trail guides cover the Pacific Crest Trail through the eastern edge of the wilderness, and maybe one other hike, but Schaffer's book is the most comprehensive. Highly recommended!
Maps
The Pacific Crest Trail and Tahoe Rim Trail are the same from well south of the wilderness through just south of Twin Peaks, where the TRT takes off east towards Tahoe City.
Granite Chief does not have an official Forest Service wilderness map of the sort many wilderness areas have, but does have a sketch map. The best map I've found is the National Geographic Trails Illustrated 804 Tahoe National Forest: Yuba and American Rivers (or the TI 803 Lake Tahoe). It is not perfect, and has trails traced that are not really trails (see the Trail Conditions page), but it has the full wilderness as opposed to many other recreational maps which show only slices of it.
The four USGS quadrangles are Homewood (southeast), Wentworth Springs (southwest), Granite Chief (northwest), and Tahoe City (northeast). If you are using mapping software such as TOPO! or TOPO! Explorer, central coordinates for the wilderness are latitude 39 degrees, 9 minutes and longitude 120 degrees, 16 minutes. If you take a look at the base topographic maps, you'll see several trails that don't show up on current recreational maps, or that have different alignments. Places to explore!
Except for a tiny corner that is within the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, the wilderness is within the Truckee and American River Ranger Districts of the Tahoe National Forest.
I intend to create a TOPO! Explorer trip file, and share it, but have some work yet to do before it is ready. Preliminarily, I have a TOPO! format .tpo file (right click PC or ctrl click Mac, do not single click), which can be used with the TOPO! application or opened in TOPO! Explorer.
Place Names
I'm very curious about the place names in the wilderness. All I've been able to find so far is place name references to location and what USGS map it was first published on, but so far no information about where the name came from. Any ideas? Why is it Picayune Valley?
More Resources
Check the "Other Granite Chief websites" links in the left sidebar for more information. And suggest resources that you've discovered!