The night before, we hiked out from the Winding Stairs Trailhead to cross the Little Missouri for camping. In the morning, on Oct 18, we started the loop clockwise at ~7:30 AM by dipping our toes in the Little Missouri crossing. It was in the 40s°F when we started, so we began with layers on and peeled them off within the first hour as we started climbing. We started with all of our food and filtered water from streams along the way. We chose to go clockwise on the loop to do the majority of the vertical gain in the beginning in fresh legs and then make up time on the second half. We made good time on the climbs, but the downhills and flat sections were much more technical than we expected, so we weren't able to make up as much time on those sections as we originally thought. We didnt see any other trail runners, but we saw lots of backpackers (some of then twice haha). Once we crossed the Little Missouri to finish, we rested for an hour and hiked back out the the car. Overall, a great and challenging day.