Beautiful morning hike.  The first mile is a decent climb and got us warm.   Once you get to the access road that goes to the top it was a much gentler climb and pretty easy.   I would definitely recommend doing this early unless you love the heat.  On our way down which was around noon you could feel the heat waves coming up the side of the mountain from the valley below.  I was definitely happy to not be going up with that.   We ran about 3.5 miles on the way back because the decent is so gradual and for the most part no gravel to slip on.  Because of that we managed to go up and back down in 3.5 hours (10.4 miles is what I recorded from the parking lot).