I hiked Mt. Wilson with a group of five people. As soon as the hike started though, I knew I was in for a challenging one. It was raining and it was cold in the morning but in the beginning, something told me it would get warmer. Boy was I wrong! I had a thin rain jacket that day that ended up getting soaked through and the poncho I had with me didn't have any sleeves so it was like I didn't even have a poncho since my jacket underneath was completely soaked. Shivering, I made it up to the peak with only one other person in the group (the other three stayed behind and said they would see us at the top) and then it hit me….. the others had the car kays… we would need to wait for them to get up to the peak to be able to hike down the mountain and wait in the car. Well, the wind was blowing and I was shivering so hard that my teeth clatters were making my head hurt. Then, another small group of hikers got to the peak and we decided to eat our lunches in the bathrooms so that we could find temporary shelter from the freezing wind. I used some of the paper towels in the restroom to somewhat dry myself and it worked a little bit but I was still incredibly cold. The other hikers then made us laugh because they confirmed that they too were questioning why they were doing this to themselves when they could have waited for the weather to be nicer. After about two hours, we checked to see if any of our other group members had made it to the top and were so happy to see that they were finally at the peak! We explained our plan to them and they let us have the car keys. They were exhausted and were going to eat their lunch while we started our descent. We got to see a bit of snow on the trail but the best part of the hike was hearing and seeing the powerful creek, and also the salamanders and newts! They were like magic! As soon as I saw them, I got so excited that I forgot I was even tired! They were so cute and I couldn't help but take pictures and videos of them. At one point, I picked up one of the newts to show to a guy who was running on the trail and he thanked me for the heads up. He said he would make sure not to step on any.