This hike was a second attempt after having to turn back the first time (in July) due to a thunderstorm. The conditions were much better this time (mid-70s with some nice cloud cover), allowing us to actually make it to the top.

We started the hike around 10a at the Marion trailhead. ** Just a note, the parking permit/national parks pass is no longer needed to park at this trailhead, but you are supposed to have a free wilderness permit from the ranger station to hike (oops didn't actually do that one).** The trail from this start onward is marked fairly well, though there are many points where it splits and rejoins, so there isn't too much concern about getting lost. The first third of the trail is pretty steep and has a good amount of elevation gain, we took this fairly slow, a lesson learned on the first attempt. The remaining trail is fairly reasonable, but definitely not an easy one. We did have one in our group who did this cold-turkey and tried (by tried I mean we didn't let him) to do the entire hike with only a gatorade and no water. He made it just fine, but was quite tired, as we all were. Our overall time breakdown was ~4h to the top and ~2h on the return. We definitely rewarded ourselves with in-n-out on the way back.

As a crazy person, I thought this would be a good hike to bring my dog on, since the first attempt wasn't too bad (we found out later that we'd only made it a little more than half way up) and he'd done other steep 6-8mi hikes with ease. This is a dog who is much tougher than he appears and loves to rock scramble, but this hike definitely killed him a little bit. He made it to the top just fine, requiring a few breaks (just like any normal person) to catch his breath and prepare for each next chunk, but by the time we were returning to the car he was moving veryyyy slow. The next day he was noticeably sore and had a hard time with his usual walk. I'm definitely going to train him a little more before taking him on another hike of this caliber, but I've got to say, he made it and did better than most humans I know (I had several friends who turned down the hike for the known difficulty).