This hike was my 2nd this year. My husband Brian and I got an early start at the Manker Flats area. Last year we went up Devil's Backbone (and loved the trail) and down the Baldy Bowl trail (and hated it because of the scree). So this time we decided to do the loop in reverse to see if that changed our opinion. It did not. It was fairly easy to get up to the Ski Hut, but after that the scree was unbearable going up and it was hard to tell if we were on trail. I got very frustrated climbing up the scree. Finally, we got to the summit and took shelter from the wind while we ate some lunch. We took the Devil's Backbone trail down to Baldy Notch where we bought a ski lift ticket down (we figured we'd done the entire loop sans ski lift in the past, so we didn't feel bad cutting off the last 3 miles). We were lucky to do this hike when we did, because the very next day it snowed and wasn't accessible for us since we have no experience with hiking in the snow.