Due to the fact that I was returning from a conference in San Francisco on Saturday, I decided to hike Mt. Baldy on Sunday using the Bear Canyon Trail, as I had already hiked up it once using the Skihut trail on the way up and devil’s backbone on the way down. I woke up extra early and arrived at around 5:18 AM to grab one of the few parking spots located at the visitor’s center. There were two other cars arriving at the same time as me, otherwise, it was empty. I started the hike at 5:30 AM with my headlamp on as it was still a little too dark to see clearly. It did get lighter fairly quickly and by 5:50 AM no longer really needed the head lamp. You have to head all the way out on the paved portion of the road near the visitor’s center and then across a small creek to begin the trail. From there the first mile or so is a fairly nice, somewhat steep but covered hike up to a clearing where you have to veer left into some foliage to stay on the trail. From there the trail was pretty exposed and steep until about 4.5 miles in. The last 1.5 miles of the trail to the top is actually the easiest as the incline is not as constant and the climb is more gradual. I will say that I definitely felt the strenuousness of this trail on the way up more than the others, but still enjoyed the hike. As far as I could tell there were only 10 people on the trail including me as I headed to the top. I passed 7 people (including the three who started at the same time as me), was passed by one person who must have taken a different way down because I never saw him again, and then had one person about 50 feet behind me nearly the who way (although he did fall behind a little more at the end, I did see him approach the top as I was getting ready to head down. His coming up on the trail actually showed me which trail to take back down as it can be easy to mix them up).

At the top, I took a few pictures and ate a protein bar (which has become a custom for every one of these hikes so far) before heading back down. On the way down I saw two hikers who said that if I find the lower end of a hiking pole on the trail to leave it as they would pick it back up on the way down. I did actually find it not too much further down the trail and built two rock cairns on either side of it to mark where it was. I then ran a good portion of the trail until it got to the steep section of it (mile 2 to mile 4.5 on the way up) where I carefully traversed down the hill trying to give way to hikers who were still coming up. The last two miles however provided some good running opportunities where I was able to make good time. I’m happy to say that no mile on the way up took more than 40 minutes and no mile on the way down took more than 30 minutes. I thought at the beginning that I was going to try to complete this hike in 7 hours, but then 6 and half hours seemed a doable goal. Finally, towards the end, I noticed that if I really ran the last half mile (most of which was the paved road), then its possible I could actually do it in under 6 hours. So, I sprinted as fast as my tired legs would take me back to the car and finished this 12.89 mile hike in 5:59:32, a feat for which I was fairly proud. I was happy to complete this summit via the more difficult trail at this pace, and was happy with my push at the end which will definitely come in handy as I’m getting ready for these Spartan races.