If you are accustomed to riding all the way up to Baldy's ski resort, Mount Laguna will be a piece of cake by comparison. It may be a higher elevation, but I'm pretty sure the start point is at a higher elevation too. I just did the Pine Valley-Cuyamaca-Sunrise Highway loop a few months ago and it seemed much easier than my memory of GMR-GRR-Baldy. (And the Santa Anas were blowing on the day I rode up Laguna, but it still wasn't miserably hard.