Mesa Trail is an "In and Out" trail, which means you go in to where ever you decide (or the end of the trail,) then back out on the same trail. I'd rate it as moderate difficulty if you're a hiker, otherwise I'd say it's strenuous. At least the first half, we only did 3.5 miles today, instead of the 13.4 that is the entire trail. The main reason behind that was the fact that it started snowing about 2 hours into the hike (we did about 5 hours with drive time included.)
Devil's Thumb:
Snow on the way back:
There were some very easy parts, and some more difficult ones. The trail starts off easy, with a wide path (about 10ft) that appears to be quite heavily used. After some distance, the trail splits and continues up hill a bit farther before turning into a "real" trail. By real trail, I mean that it's not widened more than enough for two people to walk side by side along the whole thing, sometimes less.
The hardest part was coming back off the trail from where we turned around. We'd just gone down through a valley with man-made stairs down, and back up. We stopped where 3 trails joined together and had a small lunch, and headed back. The stairs weren't so bad going down, but going back up they were a bit tougher.
Sigh, I hate people who think anyone wants to see their stupid grafiti:
