That’s the trail marked in red on the map starting from the Elephant Hill parking lot you have a short steep climb up to a grand view that gets you on your way.

Expect about a 5 to 7 hours to complete the 11 miles hike / loop. We took about 9 hours which is not bad considering all the stops for photos. A full day with the rewards of early morning and very late afternoon sunlight.

For photography I used my 24-105 mm lens about 85% of the time. A great multipurpose lens for outdoor scenery cap off with a B&W circular polarizing filter. We had been hiking other trails for a few days and I finally decided to leave my 100-400 mm lens back at the B&B. I needed to travel as light as possible, and it wasn’t conducive to the kind of scenic shooting I was working on thus far.

On the day of this hike we had clouds in the sky which is a definite plus and nice finish to any scenic photo.