We enjoyed this hike. It's steep enough to feel like you did something, but short enough to do on New Year's Day after sleeping off a hangover.
We took the first turn from the Pratt Trail up to the ridgeline. It's a lovely trail, mossy and lined with trees. We didn't find it hard to follow. Once you reach a saddle/junction with other trail (second turn from the Pratt Trail) you want to head downhill for a minute to catch the proper trail heading up the ridge. You don't need to do the bushwhacking other people mention on their trip reports. Trail up the ridge is steep but not hard to follow. It was icy with bits of frost until on the ridgeline, where the was some snow. We wore our microspikes on the way down only and used poles up and down.
View of Garfield is just lovely. Wow. What a mountain! We continued along the ridgeline until the trail completely petered out then backed up to the Garfield viewpoint for our snack. The trail section here is rather brushy in places with some large blowdowns. We took the other trail back to make a little loop at the end. Some old logging cables here.
Did a bit of trail maintenance by sawing branches of a downed tree to make it easier to pass and save the moss/ferns next to it from further trampling. If you can bring some hedge clippers and work on the brushy section along the ridgeline that would be sweet (we only had a saw which wasn't much help there).
My GPS said our route was 3 miles and 1500 gain, which is more than the 1,000 others state.
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