Stranded In The Southland

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Twin Peaks -- Nah, Waterman Mountain


I headed out last Sunday, intending to pick off Twin Peaks, which lie just beyond Waterman Mountain. I figured that this would make a nice long hike, and I'd always meant to bag 'em (well, really, just the left one). I even went so far as to program a series of waypoints into my GPS.

Alas, as is so often the case, things didn't work out quite right. I managed to miss the trailhead somehow and scrambled up a steep slope to find the trail. It turns out that the instructions on the web had me parking just a tenth or so of a mile past the trailhead.

After slogging three-quarters of the way up Waterman, I turned off on the trail to Twin Peaks, which then plunges several hundred feet and then climbs up to Twin Peaks. Alas, I wolfed down a giant sandwich, and then started to feel kind of ill.

About the time I got near to the low point of the hike, I started to feel pretty low. Between my stomach and head, I decided to turn back, rather than stagger up Twin Peaks, back down, and then back up to Waterman.

I made it back up to where the trail splits to go to Waterman, and felt well enough to at least bag Waterman. After some wandering, I found the high point on the mountain, only a quarter-mile away from where I'd been knee deep in snow a few weeks before.

This time, there were only a few isolated patches of snow, and it was a much easier hike. It's just as well I nabbed this peak, though, as I'll be leading a hike up there in a month or so.