My wife and I started on the Waterman trail a little after 7am. This was our first trip here and although we had heard the TH was difficult to find and we were looking, we still missed it. We ended up hiking the fire road up to the ski area. The caretaker showed us where to pickup the upper Waterman trail, but somehow we missed it again! We bushwacked down a gully and did finally locate the trail near the false-summit sign.
We hiked on the trail for a distance, then began to wonder if we had indeed missed the cut-off again! We decided to bushwack down hoping to angle to the Twin Peaks trail. We traveled down through a huge boulder field which was quite spectacular. We were zigzagging across a ridge and I started working around a gigantic boulder when i spotted a very large enclave underneath that appeared to have markings from a large animal, possbly a bear. We quickly made tracks to a ridge on the opposite side!
Eventually we found the Three-points trail and connected with Twin Peaks trail and got to the saddle. I was getting very tired at this point as the bushwacking took a lot of energy. We decided to continue, not sure of we'd make the summit. The trail was well-marked and in good shape except for a few loose spots. It took us about an hour from saddle to summit.
We stayed a short time on top, then started down. We met two ladies on their way up. The return became very challenging as we started to run out of gas! Fortunately we had packed plenty of food and water and made it back safely. We were back at the car a little after 2pm.
I have to say this was quite a challenge and we made it worse by getting off the trail too soon and spent a lot of energy in that boulder field. Won't do THAT again!
It's a beautiful hike and was a prep for us before a 14er trip to colorado at the end of the month.
