Whew!!! This was the toughest hike so far for us, but it was sooooo fun. We started near Manker campground, and first hiked up to the ski resort. It felt so funny to be hiking for a while, and then wind up at a resort. We used their bathrooms and ate a snack. If we do baldy again, we will probably just take the ski lift up and eat at the lodge, but this time we wanted to do the full route. The section up the ski slope was steep and grueling, but devil's backbone was spectacular. We saw a few near-miss falls on the backbone; be careful up there! One funny encounter was of two bros saying “wait, this says we are on mount San Antonio. I thought we were doing mount baldy? We must have gotten on the wrong mountain!”. The summit was incredible, as expected. We ate a long lunch and had a quick nap on top. We could clearly see Gorgonio, our next stop. We took the baldy bowl route down, which was very steep and hard on the knees.
Overall, a fantastic hike, we will probably do it again, but for now its on to the next mountain.
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