It's been a while since I've been to the top of Mt. Baldy (hiked from the ski hut once, ran the Mt. Baldy RTTT race in 2017) and wow I forgot how killer of hike this is. My group had allocated 6 hours to complete the hike, and it ended up taking us almost 8 hours to hike from the parking lot to the summit and then down the Baldy Bowl trail. With that said, it was absolutely beautiful and the weather was perfect—80s towards the bottom but 60s at the top. We had lots of cloud cover too so the sun wasn't too bad.

If I had to give any advice I'd say to get to the trailhead as early as you can bare it! My group had a 1.5 hour drive to get there and even with a 6:45am arrival time the parking lot was almost full. Crazy! But I'm so happy to see all the hikers/runners enjoying this beautiful place. 🙂