What a great hike yesterday. The plan was to complete four peaks in the Cucamonga Wilderness area. Etiwanda, Cucamonga, Bighorn, and Ontario Peaks. More commonly known as ECBO. Alltrails has this hike listed as a 17.2-mile hike with a total elevation gain of about 6,125 feet. My S-Health App on my phone recorded the distance at 19.46 and normally that App is pretty accurate. That said, on my Tom Harrison Map, it comes to about 19 miles. And, by counting the contour lines then multiplying that by the contour interval it came out to just over 5,900 feet in elevation gain. However, I did not count all the small gains and losses along Ontario Ridge, so the 6,125 is likely pretty close.

Anyway, three other HBTH Misfits and I stepped off just after 6am from the Icehouse Canyon Trailhead. I arrived right around 5am and found the parking lot to be crazy busy and almost full. In fact, within 15 minutes of my arrival it was full. There were dozens of hikers and groups of hikers all along the trail as we made our way to Icehouse Saddle. Which, surprisingly, wasn’t as crowded as I thought it might be. As we made our way to Etiwanda Peak the number of hikers, we ran into kind of thinned out. Once we made it to the fork on the trail that leads either to Cucamonga Peak or continues along the Cucamonga Peak Trail, we only saw two other hikers coming down from Etiwanda Peak on the Cucamonga Peak Trail.

After a nice rest at Etiwanda Peak, we then headed back one mile to Cucamonga Peak for our second summit of the day. Here is where we found all the hikers! Go figure!! We spent several minutes again, relaxing and this time waiting in line to take a group photo. ;p Once we finished, we packed up and had a nice easy stroll back down to Cucamonga Saddle. We decided to not break at the saddle, but to just continue to push up the steep .5-mile slope to Bighorn Peak. This short little trek boasts a 750-foot elevation gain. Like Etiwanda Peak, we had the entire peak to ourselves. Except for a pair of hikers that arrived just as we were leaving.

From Bighorn Peak we followed the Ontario Ridge Trail over to Ontario Peak where we celebrated our 4^th and final peak of the day. All that was left was the long 5.5-mile trek back down to the Icehouse Canyon Trailhead. We were all a bit tired, and the heat and exposure forced us to drink a bit more water than we had planned. We each brought about 4 to 5 liters with us. The weather forecast called for summit and higher elevation temps throughout the day to be in the low 50’s and potentially feel like upper 40’s. Lower elevation temps were forecast between mid-60’s and mid-70’s. That certainly was not the case. With the exception of the early morning, temperatures felt more like upper 70’s and low 80’s. We all ran out of water with just about 2 miles to go. That said, we stopped and filtered at least 1 liter each for the remainder of our hike.

All in all, it was a great day with great friends. Lots of stories, lots of laughter, and lots of struggles. It was a long and very warm 19 plus mile day with just over 6,100 feet in elevation gain and we were all grateful for the opportunity and ability to successfully complete the journey. On a personal note, for me, Cucamonga marked my 12^th Peak of the SoCal Six Pack of Peaks Challenge for this year and Ontario and Bighorn Peaks were my second summits for this year.