We went to the Maple Springs Visitor Center (marked with the red pen), use the restrooms there (we live 1.5 hours away), and continued on a single lane paved road for about 2-3 miles. The road changed (marked with an exclamation mark) to a very bumpy single lane dirt road where we often had to pull over and make room for other cars going down passing our 2WD 4Runner. You don't need an all-wheel drive or 4×4 vehicle, but you should definitely have something that has a higher clearance and not just a normal car. We were on that dirt road for about 4 miles before we reached a bigger dirt pull out commonly known as 4 Conners (marked with the pointing finger). The start to the 10 mile hike to Santiago Peak via Maple Springs on AllTrails starts there at the gates. Just make sure you stay to the right at the beginning and go on the Main Divide Road, not the Harding Truck Trail. There are lots of off-road vehicles which means dust- not everyone was kind to us like they were last year…

The trail up is pretty rocky and it was pretty warm. We took our time going up, stopping to take a few pictures along the way. However, this year we were bombarded by tons of bugs. I've never seen anything like it. At the top, we took a some more pictures, but didn't bother to stay long due to the bugs being worse at the top. Look for the highest pile of rocks and you'll find the geo marker.