After following the reviews on Yelp, my boyfriend and I decided to hike cholla trail on New Year's Day. The parking instructions given were great but we definitely recommend scouting out the location before the actual hike. We planned on hiking early so we could see the sunrise and were pleasantly surprised that there weren't many people on the mountain yet. We made it to the first lookout point with ease and thought we were doing well. I am a (very) beginner hiker, my boyfriend as well but much more athletic than I am. After that point though, I would say the difficulty increased dramatically. In order to make it to the top, we really had to push ourselves and the trail became very very strenuous. The view at the top was worth it and I'm glad we went but I definitely couldn't have done it alone and it took us a solid 3 hours. If you're a true beginner like me I wouldn't recommend this as a casual hike like people keep saying, the reward of making it to the top comes after some very treacherous segments.