Great hike. As others have said, it is longer than the trail description on AllTrails says. It is over 15 miles out and back from street parking. Found parking, luckily, right near the road going up to trailhead (quite busy on a Sunday morning, at 9 am). Lots of people up and down the trail up until First Water, and then the crowd thinned out. Most of the way the hike is on dirt roads, with steady and sometimes steep inclines, but not much rock scrambling. At around mile 5.13, there is a narrow ledge needing to walk carefully over some rocks, but nothing too bad. Orchard Camp, around 4 miles in, is a good place to take a break, and so is the Bench at Manzanita Ridge, at around 5.5 miles up. From there, expect another 2+ miles to the summit. The paved road from Red Box Picnic area, near Strawberry Peak Trailhead, to the Observatory was closed, for unknown reasons, and so was the Cosmic cafe. So, there was just a few hikers up on the Summit and not much more foot traffic. There were no summit signs. We took the paved road down instead of going back on the trail since it was a bit late in the day and we did not have equipment to hike in the dark (5 miles from summit down to Redbox Picnic area). So, saved a few miles. Hitched a ride after 3 miles on the paved road, were dropped off in La Canada and took a Lyft back to Sierra Madre trailhead. It was quite warm all the way up and little shade past First Water. There was no need to take warm clothes, as some of the reviews had implied. There is snow on the trail in the last mile or so, but mostly melting and it was easy to walk around it and not needing to actually hike on the snow. Water filling station on the summit was working well. Overall, a good hike and other than the distance, I find no reason to call it a “hard” hike. A moderate but long hike, is more like it, for me at least.