Love starting hikes early in the morning but still ran into people screaming and playing their loud music.  We did the fire road on the way up which is an early morning butt kicker.  I have done the Lake Poway trail up but I enjoyed this one more because it was less people.   Plus, the loop on the backside was pretty and covered.  We only ran into 4 people once we started back on the loop.  Loved watching the sunrise over the mountains on our backside.  And, since we had people that were being loud behind us our motivation to keep going and moving faster to get ahead of them made the climb faster for us.  When we made it to Potatoe Chip rock we did not have to wait in line since we busted a move on the way up.  This is a great starting point to the challenge.