Dial, Nippletop, Colvin, Blake, Indian head, and Fishhawk cliffs.

On September 23, 2020, our alarm went off at 3am and we headed back to the mountains. We planned on only climbing Dial and Nippletop mountains, and then finishing off the day at Indian head outlook.

We arrived at St. Huberts parking lot around 7:30am, it was a little later than we had hoped, we had already lost an hour of daylight. This trail starts with about a half mile walk up a road toward AMR. The road was beautiful with the foliage starting to turn. You'll pass by a small golf course, and turn left just past the tennis courts.

You have the option of completing the Dial and Nippletop loop in either direction, we chose to do Dial first, then Nippletop for two reasons. The first reason being that this way is a slow/gradual soft/dirt incline versus the steep rocky incline if you choose to climb Nippletop first. The second reason was that we wanted to end our day on Indian head.

We started around 8am and reached Dial's peak at 1025am. It was windy but the views were pretty with the foliage. There's also an outlook called Bears den on the way to Dial, but we apparently missed it.

We reached Nippletop at 1144 am and saw the first people of the day. This view was even better than Dial and you could see further. As we sat on the peak talking about how great we felt, we decided why not do Colvin and Blake too! After all, this hike was going to be around 14 miles, plus when we come back for Blake and Colvin it would be an additional 14 mile hike. So why not make today a 20 mile hike? We felt fresh and weren't ready to be finished yet, which we should really know better by now that the downhill is going to beat us up worse than the uphill.

We continued down the steep rocky slope toward Colvin and through Elk pass. Colvin is just under a mile off the loop we originally planned.

Summited Colvin's peak at 1:45pm and we still were feeling good. Colvin's view was by far the best view that day so far.

We had heard that Blake was a wooded peak and that most people recommend against this peak, unless you want to complete all 46 high peaks, but we still underestimated it. It was incredibly steep and we were officially tired. We reached what we thought was the summit, it wasn't, GPS was spotty and the trail wasn't well marked. The trail continues past Blake peak and the last thing we wanted was to accidentally pass it and add more mileage. Finally we found the marker, a small rock, sitting on top of a boulder at about 2:50 pm.

We didn't waste much time here and began the trek back over Colvin and out toward Indian head. Most people will say this is the worst part of the hike, but I think up to Blake was worse.

There are two outlooks over Indian head, we got to the first one around 5:30pm. I was looking forward to this view the most out of all the places we had planned for this trip and let me tell ya, it was absolutely gorgeous and I can't wait to go back. It was golden hour and we watched the sun disappear over the ridge before we continued back to the car. We were lucky enough to have this all to ourselves, it's often overcrowded due to its popularity. But the hike down and back to the car in the dark was rough after such a long day and I understand why we were the only people there so late. There may have been a faster way back to the car, but mentally I was done and didn't have the energy to research the map at this point. It was about 3 miles back down that spooky road through the wilderness in darkness, thank goodness for our head lamps. I was sure a bear was going to come out of the trees and maul us. Then out of the darkness, a man appeared wearing sweat pants and a hoodie with no flashlight or light of any kind. He was on the other side of the road but then stared coming right for us... not what you want to see on a dark road after a long hike but he was friendly and passed right by.

It felt like this last stretch was never ending, but we finally made it back to the car. Our GPS stated it was a 19.4 mile hike, with 6,342 feet of elevation gain, and took us 10 hours and 44 minutes of moving time. We didn't take many breaks or rest much so the total time was 11 hours and 30 minutes, but we were glad because we didn't want to be out any later.

Looking back we're glad we decided to do all four peaks instead of having to make two days out of it, but it was exhausting. We told ourselves it would be okay if we didn't hike any high peaks the next day as we had originally planned to do five peaks over three days. Adding on Colvin and Blake allowed us to do a few shorter peaks in Tabletop and Big Slide the following days. That night we were staying at the Loj in the canvas tents along side some friends from work. Would recommend the canvas tents as they are cheap to rent and keep you off of the ground. Just make sure to keep food in an air tight/bear proof container, and beware of mice..