Stranded In The Southland

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Three Tee's: Thunder, Telegraph, & Timber

After a break of a week and a half to take care of a sick cousin and just generally relax, I finally headed out again yesterday. My pal PV had called up, suggesting we bag a few HPS peaks out by Mt. Baldy.

We finally settled on doing the "Three Tee's: Thunder Peak, Telegraph Peak, and Timber Peak." It's a tough 13.1 mile hike with a few thousand feet of gain, requiring a car shuttle, since it isn't a loop.

Despite my tardy arrival at 8:30AM instead of 8:15AM (and I HATE to be late!), we headed off up the dirt road from Manker Flat in plenty of time, having left my car at Icehouse Canyon. The weather wasn't as miserably hot as of late, and we made good time. PV had never been up the road before, so it was all new to him.

After a three and a half mile slog, we wound up at the Baldy Notch, zipped over to the road up to Thunder, and started slogging again. I really hate hiking up dirt roads, especially when I can see the tire prints from the trucks that've already gone up -- if I could've driven up, WTF am I walking!?

Anyway, we finally made it to Thunder, which is covered in ski slope stuff, including a ski lift. After a brief break, we headed out for the much taller Telegraph Peak. Telegraph Peak, to my surprise, was almost directly east of Thunder.

It worked to require quite a few switchbacks to make it up, but we finally did it. Some Boy Scouts had set up a great register box which was chained to the rock itself. Yow, what a lot of trouble! After signing in and eating lunch, we headed for the final peak, Timber.

I couldn't believe how far we had to hike down, and then back up, to do Timber. After all the hiking that came before, I was totally over it, but we slogged up Timber, too.

Finally, we headed down Icehouse Canyon, stopping off at Columbine Springs for some more water and brief snack, and then heading out. We saw only two hikers the whole time -- one up by Baldy Notch, running down, and about a mile out from the Icehouse Canyon trailhead. Wild.

It was a good hike, but I have to admit that my break of a week and a half was enough to lose me my callouses -- I had a bumper crop of (not very painful) blisters when I got back. Doh. Time for some better-breathing socks!

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