Black Mountain, the other way up

I haven't been hiking in a long time, so I was excited when Rick asked me to hike Black Mountain with him and Danika after work on Monday. We parked in a neighborhood at the base of the mountain (around Horizon Ridge and Gibson) at 6pm and headed up. It was about 105-degrees, but the heat was surprisingly mild. I've never been up this side of Black Mountain, and I like this route much better because it is shorter and has some scrambling.
It took an hour to get to the top, and the view was amazing as always. The sunset was spectacular this night, and we spent about an hour chatting at the top.
We took the paved service road down the mountain because the rocks on the mountain were too unstable to traverse at night. Of course, I fell down a number of times on the loose gravel, and Rick managed to capture one of my clumsy moments on film. It took about an hour to get down for a round trip of 3 hours, the perfect after work hike.

Thank you to Rick for sharing these pictures. This is my first hike when I didn't bring a camera (shocking!), but I can always count on Rick to take some good action shots.