This was my first time hiking up to San Jacinto Peak on the Marion Mountain trail and I absolutely loved it!  What a contrast from all the burned forest we saw during our San Bernardino peak hike the previous weekend.  There was an abundance of foliage: bright green ferns, red-barked manzanita trees, mountain whitethorn, ponderosa pines and so much more.  The giant granitic rocks that scattered the landscape gave it an even more fascinating appeal…I could spend hours investigating them all.  But alas, we had a mountain to climb!  And what an intense climb it was.  We got to the trail head around 7:15am and there were only a few parked cars.  The mosquitos at the trail head were INSANE! We were worried that it would be like that on the hike, but fortunately once we got a wiggle on then there was a significant decrease in pesky bugs.  The climb was brutal and never ending but we were rewarded at the end with beautiful views and the summit all to ourselves! We spent a hour there enjoying our lunches and watching the Red-tailed hawks soar and dive all around us.  We passed several backpackers going back down the mountain but it was still a relatively mellow amount of people.  The descent was LONG but we made it! We got back to the car at 4pm and the mosquitos were not nearly as bad as they were at dawn.