When I first moved to Southern California two years ago, I never imagined I would take on a challenge like this. Yet, there I was this past Sunday with my girlfriend, determined to make it happened. Let me start by saying, we are both very new to this. Up until this point, neither of us had hiked more than seven or eight miles. In fact, we weren't even going to start the six peaks until we got a bit more distance under our belts. However, when deciding where to hike on Sunday, we decided to just go for it.

The weather was beautiful! We arrived at Chantry Flats around 7:30 AM. The parking lot was full, but fortunately, our little car fit in a small space on the side of the road right outside the parking lot. We took a while getting started, and probably didn't actually begin the hike until 8:15 or so. Since with was our first hike this long and strenuous, we took our time making our way up the mountain. We took a little too much time… But I'll get back to that in a minute.

The first half of the hike was some of the most pleasant, beautiful hiking I've ever done. We took the Gabrielino Lower Trail to the Sturtevant Trail. It took us past waterfalls, along a creek, and through the woods. The trail was well-marked and well-maintained. It was a little narrow at places, but nothing too intense. We arrived at the Spruce Grove Trail Camp where we took a break (which we probably should have made shorter), at some food, and used the somewhat pungent outhouses. Then we went through the Sturtevant Camp, which has some fun history to it. That's when the trail became truly challenging. The last 3.5 miles was steep, uphill, without a whole lot of variation in scenery. Let me tell you, my legs felt the burn!

Finally, we made it to the top. The views were magnificent! We were disappointed that the snack shack was closed (according to its posted hours, it should have been), but it was just as well because we realized we were running out of daylight. We had planned to do the loop and take the Winter Creek Trail back, but we had some trouble finding it, and it just kept getting later. We didn't want to waste anymore time looking for it, and if we were going to be stuck on a trail after dark, we wanted it to be on one that we were at least somewhat familiar with.

I don't remember exactly what time it was when we left the peak, probably around 3:00 PM, with the sun setting at 4:50 PM. We knew we weren't going to make it back before dark, but we had no choice but to keep moving. We moved down that mountain as fast as our tired little legs would take us. We didn't take a single break, other than to use the outhouse at Spruce Grove Camp again. Even so, we ended up doing the last mile and a half or so in the dark. Between us, we had a headlamp and a flashlight, but I have no intention of being stuck on a trail in the dark like that again. Every little sound had me on edge, worrying about bears and mountain lions. I'm not sure how given how dark it was, but somehow we ended up doing something slightly different, as we didn't past the part of the trail with the waterfalls again, but we made it back to Chantry Flats. I think it was around 6:30 PM.

Clearly, we made a lot of novice mistakes, but live and learn, right? Thankfully, everything turned out okay. For future hikes, we will definitely start earlier, take shorter and fewer breaks, and plan ahead for our return from the peak. We also need to get a second set of hiking poles (we only had one between us), which was the plan anyway, and buy some bear spray. It's three days later and I'm still sore, so I definitely need to do more conditioning and stretching, but that doesn't come as a surprise to me.

Cucamonga Peak, here we come! After the appropriate recovery time…