My plan is to take the ridge to the west of Bailey Canyon up. That’s it. Here’s my intended path:

The gain is about 2850′ in only 2 miles! That’s some pretty serious gain. But the only thing that concerns me though is the steep incline right before the one mile mark. Not sure of what kind of terrain this is going to be either. This part looks like a loose scramble up. But we’ll see.

1. Check out the snow level.
2. Get up to Wilson in 3.5 hours and be done with the entire hike in 7 hours.

We kept a quick pace throughout stopping very little for breaks. The normal stops that are normally taken weren’t. First Water, skipped. Orchard Camp, just a blur. Manzanita Ridge however we had to stop. It’s very tempting not to stop at a place with a bench. Also, some of us included myself needed some food in our stomach.

After a 15 minute stop, we headed out and made our way along the ridge to the Toll Road. This was quite a different site. Last week the entire road was covered with about 1-2 feet of snow all the way up to Mt. Wilson. Now hardly a foot left.

Walking along the road, a lot of it on the road had turned to ice which made walking at times a bit challenging. A good safety measure for us though was that the road was plowed so the side embankments had a nice 3 foot high mound separating us from the steep declines.

We got to the trail connecting the road and the trail leading up to the parking lot. This part was still decently covered in snow which was at times slightly iced over. The ice here though was mixed with some snow which gave some traction. We kept trudging along, and soon enough we reached the top and enjoyed the snow for a brief time before lunch.

Looking back now, I suppose I should have taken a shot of the actual view. I was just too preoccupied with snow and food to remember.

The way back down we decided to make a mini-loop of this hike. So we continued along the Mt. Wilson Toll Road to connect with the Hastings Peak ridge trail.

We took the connector trail down back to the Mt. Wilson Trail. From this point, some of us decided to jog the rest of the way down. We did pretty well and stopped briefly at First Water before taking the technical portion full on.

This day was a pleasure because we beat our goal by almost 30 minutes! 6.5 hours for the entire trip, and to the top, 3 hours 10 minutes. Fantastic day with great company and after hike food at Lucky Baldwin’s for some chicken pot pie and Guinness.