I had quite the hike and it would have much better if I would have stuck to my original plan. My original plan was to arrive at Manker Flat at 7:30AM, drop off my mountain bike, drive to Icehouse Canyon parking lot, hike to Icehouse Saddle, complete the Three Tee's Trail, take the ski lift back to Manker Flat, and enjoy a 3-mile downhill bike ride back to my truck. I didn't really care about arriving late to Icehouse parking because I had my bicycle and if I needed to park up the road, I could easily bicycle down to it.

What actually happened was this ...

Everything happened perfectly as noted above, except after starting my hike to Icehouse Saddle, I reached the junction of Chapman Trail which I've passed a couple of times before on previous trips to Cucamonga Peak and Ontario Peak. Well, my curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to see what Chapman Trail was like. I knew it would add an additional 2 miles to my hike, but I wasn't thinking that would be 2 more miles of uphill and more consumption of my water and food. Big mistake. When I finally reached Icehouse Saddle, it was 12pm instead of 10am and I was pretty tired. I had drunk half of my fluids and more than half of my food and I knew that climbing the 3Ts from this direction was more difficult from the other direction. What was I thinking by taking Chapman Trail?! Well, the views of Ontario Peak and Icehouse Canyon were magnificent, and the shelf trail was spectacular, that's for sure. I will definitely do this trail again, but in reverse.

I reached Icehouse Saddle, checked my bladder and sure enough, I had drunk 1.5L of water. Bummer. Thankfully, I did bring some extra bottles on the sides of my backpack so I should be ok. I wolfed down a sandwich and snagged a photo at the Three Tee's signpost and took off for Timber Mtn. I reached Timber and was stoked! The hike to Telegraph was a different story though as I was pretty tired by that point. The saddle between Timber and Telegraph was unnamed on my map, but Google Earth had it as "Japanese Saddle". I think someone named it that because of the trees looking like bonsai trees. The side trail to Telegraph Peak was a beast of a hike. I almost skipped it as I was gassed after doing Chapman. When I reached the turnoff and saw that someone inscribed 0.3 mile on it, I decided "What the heck? You're here. Just do it!" I reached the peak at 4:45pm, took a quick video of the surroundings and of Thunder Mtn down below and high-tailed it to Baldy Notch as I knew that the ski lift closed at 5:45pm. Well, unfortunately, when I was within an 1/8 of a mile of the peak of Thunder Mtn and looked down toward the ski lift at Baldy Notch and it wasn't running. I was devastated. It was only 5:15pm. I ended bombing down the ski run instead of taking the fire road down to Baldy Notch which was a HUGE mistake as it destroyed my legs and when I reached the bottom, I realized it made for another uphill climb to Baldy Notch. But, again, the ski lift wasn't running. I reached the top and it was closed, and no one was around. I was crushed.

I had enough water, so I ended up just laying down on the ground and just took a nap for about 15 minutes. When I woke, I got up and then hiked the remaining 3 miles down to the end of the ski lift at Manker Flat to where my locked bike was and washed off in the bathroom. I unlocked my bike and bombed down to my truck. All in all, an amazingly long and tired day.