August 22, 2015
We arrived at the Giant via the ridge trail a little before 6am and headed out shortly after. There weren’t any other cars parked for Giant and no one else had signed into the trailhead yet that morning, so we knew we would be the only ones on the trail for a while, which is always nice.
Everyone was telling the truth when they said this trail doesn’t waste any time in gaining elevation! The trail starts going up immediately. After doing Allen a few weeks before, I was kind of hoping that there would be a little bit of a flat warm up at first. Climbing immediately made it a little difficult at time, as I tend to have a hard time pacing myself. Luckily, Alex is very good at setting a solid pace. There were a lot of open rock areas, which I thought would be tough to climb up (and down), but were actually extremely easy to just walk up. The views from these open rock faces were amazing! The trail was almost completely dry and it was a beautiful day, which made the hike even better. Another pair of hikers passed us on the way up, but we reached the summit at 8:40. 
It was beautiful on the summit, as it was still nice and cool since it was so early in the morning. The view was amazing! The clouds were low, but not so low that they covered too much. It kind of seemed like a storm was rolling in, but I don’t think it ever rained that day. We took a nice long break to relax a little at the summit and then headed back down.
We took our time heading back to the car, but the climb down really wasn’t too terrible either. The rock faces I mentioned before were so much easier to walk down than I had anticipated. But I’m not sure that I would want to go down those in winter! On our way down, we passed so many people that I lost count after the 12th group. So many people had dogs with them as well! Which I thought was awesome. I love seeing dogs on trail!
When we reached Giant’s washbowl we decided to take another lengthy break since the hike had been so short and we wanted to spend some more time in the woods. We relaxed and had some lunch and then continued back to the car. We got back to the trailhead around 12:25pm. Although it was a short hike, it was a great day. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend my morning! 14/46
More Than A Good View 