I saved the beast for last. This was hands down the hardest hike I have ever done, but it was an amazing (somewhat terrifying) adventure!

Arrived at Manker Campground at 6:50 a.m. and there was plenty of parking as it was a Monday. We began our hike shortly after 7 a.m. We opted to take the Baldy Bowl trail, up past the ski hut, and then down the devil's backbone. The trail is only 3.5 miles but it took us 5.5 hours to summit ?

I should mention that we did lose the trail and ended up scaling part of a mountain. Once we realized something was off, we made our way back down to the trail. This added an hour to our time. Thankfully, a trio came up right behind us. They were very knowledgeable and told us exactly where to go.

Once we passed the ski hut it was nothing but up, up, up. The constant climbing (not to mention elevation) made this incredibly difficult. I moved very slowly and had to stop frequently. Nevertheless, we persisted on!

When we arrived at the summit there were only 2 others there. Once they left a handful of others joined from all directions. We only stayed for 30 minutes because we knew we had a long way down, and the sun would be setting around 5 p.m. now with the time change.

We descended down the devil's backbone which was amazing and also terrifying! It is not for the faint of heart, especially for those with a fear of heights. Once we got down past the Top of the Notch restaurant, we got a little lost again. There are 2 trails. One goes up and one goes down. Naturally we assumed we would go down. Once we hit a dead end into forest area, we knew we'd gone the wrong way. We climbed back up on got on the correct trail. That added another 30 minutes. I was getting nervous about the sun going down. The time was now 3:30 p.m.

The trail takes you to Mount Baldy Road and is a fire road. It's not that steep, just long. We were tired. A truck came down behind us, presumably an employee, and we waved to each other. I wished I had asked him for a ride down. About 5 minutes later another employee drove down. This time I DID ask him for a ride and he kindly agreed. I tried to offer him some money, but he wouldn't take it. He saved us about an hour of walking and possibly getting caught in the dark. Thank you Treven!

We made it to our cars at exactly 4 p.m. This was an incredibly memorable day. What a great way to finish off the Six Pack of Peaks!