The beginning of the trail was a nice peaceful forested trail with some mild inclines. Then it opened up to several miles of old lava flow to cross. There was a smaller patch of lava flow (maybe 1/4 of a mile or so), and one small break of trees, and then the rest was what felt like we were Fordo and Sam trying to get the one ring to the fires of Mount Doom! What made this funnier is there was a note posted to the board at beginning of the trailhead saying that someone had lost their wedding ring! It was hot and dry with no shade. We were there in the morning so the Trek up wasn't too bad. The lava rock is loose and uneven, so I was glad to be wearing boots to protect my ankles, and I had a hiking pole with me which came in very handy. Beautiful mountains views with the contrast of the lava rock, though!

We got a much needed break from the lava rock with another smooth-dirt forest trail, but we missed a left turn here and ended up going 1.5 miles too far, toward Mt. Washington (we almost tried to hike the wrong mountain!). It wasn't hard to find our way back once we realized we needed to turn around.

The trek to the summit was pretty tough! It was a 600+ climb up nothing but sand and rock, so we were duck-footing the whole way up. You really have to watch your footing here because it's really easy to slide. All of us had a bit of a 3-steps-forward, 1 or 2-slides-back kind of experience on the ascent.

The view from the top was awesome, but very windy! All three of us about got blown over at one point, and I had to rescue my Six Pack of Peaks hat (only thing that saved it was my ponytail)!

The descent was equally steep and sandy, so we ended up doing what felt like “french fries,” like downhill skiing, until we got down and out of the sliding sand.

Crossing the lava flows felt so much longer on the way back! While we were chatty and laughing on the way in, we were almost dead silent on the way back! Our legs were like jelly from the scurry up and down the summit, so we had to focus harder on our footing once we got to the lava rock. We got to the treeline and let a little cheer… but only one of us remembered the smaller, first patch of lava rock, so when we hit it, it was almost total despair, lol. We got through it though and enjoyed the downhill forest trail the rest of the way back to the car.

Sunscreen is a must! And make sure you get it everywhere, as a missed a couple of spots and definitely got burned.

Overall a challenging hike, but all of us can still say we enjoyed it. I would definitely do this one again!