Left the house at 6:15am and headed out on a 2 hour journey to the mountain. Was a little nerve wrecking as we could feel the heat already climbing with every mile of the drive. We decided to start at the lower trailhead because we heard parking was more crowded at the Upper One. The trailhead from here was actually fairly discrete. More than I expected anyways. We started our journey at 8:35am. From what we were thinking, the summit was about 3.0 miles up. After about 2 miles it felt like we should be getting close. I feel like that’s when the hike actually began. I have not done many challenging hikes  in my life, and this was definitely one of the top 3. I actually didn’t mind the heat so much, but I did drink nearly all my water by the time we summitted. We reached the summit by about 12/1230, had a little lunch, took a few pictures and started our descent. The wildflowers were beautiful….those dangnab horse flies were a bit of a terror though! As we passed the upper trail, we felt a little defeated that we still had about 1.5/2 miles togo. Our legs were tired by the end of the journey, and we’ve proved to be sore for quite a few days. We saw some people decide to stop along the way because it was too hot or too challenging, and we saw some others climbing the long stair section with a pack and a child on there back…, that was IMPRESSIVE! The views along the way were more spectacular than the views from the top, in my opinion. And the ravens were awesome with how they drafted off the breeze, staying in one spot. At the end I said I’d be fine never doing this hike again… but I think I’m already rethinking that. We took 6:19 min round trip. With a ~30min break at the summit…..not included in time, and almost 4000 ft elevation.