This was a longer hike than expected, but not bad (7.5 hours round trip). It had a couple of points where it was steep, but nothing too bad. The hardest obstacles were a rock wall that had to be climbed and the scrub at the beginning and the end (summit side) of the hike. The very first part of the hike was a bulldozer cut that went to an old mining operation. After the cut, I had to bushwhack through about 1500 feet of low scrub to the spine of the mountain range. Most of this was very steep, with rock covered dirt. On the way to the summit, I tried a few different routes through the scrub, opting for the stuff with the shallowest grade. On the way back, I took the shortest path down, which was pretty steep but doable. Once through the scrub I walked the spine over several smaller peaks in the range. There is a spotty path up, which completely disappears at times. There some cairns along the way, but I only saw about half on the way up and others on the way back. About 2 summits before the activation summit there was a large wall of rock that I had to climb over. As with many trips I make, sometimes I am not sure if I will be able to get back after I climb an obstacle, this was no exception. The final ascent was all scrub, fortunately it was tall and not as difficult to get through as the beginning of the trip, but it was still work. On longer hikes my policy is to take the same route back as I took going in. I made the mistake of breaking that rule and ended up adding about 1/4 mile of difficult hiking to the trip as I ended up on a steep cliff face with the only alternate route out being thick low scrub. On shorter hikes, where I can see the entire route back, I will sometimes take another route back, longer hikes can just be extra work, like on this trip.
