Saved the best/worst for last – Mt. Sizer

The good: so much beautiful manzanitas with their dark reddish brown trunks and light green foliage throughout the trail as trees and shrubs varieties.

The bad: We should have maybe kept our original plan to do an out and back from Monument trail and Hobbs Road to the peak of Mt. Sizer and back down, which would have been a 12 mile out and back. We happened to see the park ranger who suggested that the loop is better, but we had 5 different trails he described once we come back down on Jackass Trail. As such, we follower a loop on Alltrails that passed through The Narrows, which was walking on the dry creekbed full of rocks and required scrambling up and down on boulders. The 1-mile section slowed us down quite a bit, and we ended up with 2 miles to go after the sun set. That said, the last 4 miles up China Hole Trail – Manzanita Point Road – Springs Trail – Corral Trail is a gradual uphill and easy to navigate even as the sun is setting. Fortunately, no big cats, coyotes, wild boar, etc. on the trail. We did see a family of deer in the last 2 miles.