Brown Mtn and Mt McLoughlin Attempt

Brown Mtn (7,340ft) and Mt McLoughlin Attempt (to 8,200ft)

On Brown Mtn

Dec 3-4, 2022

Eric and Matthew

We wanted to meet up to do a weekend trip to test out some new gear, but unfortunately flying anywhere wasn’t an option this time. Matthew lives in San Jose, CA and I’m in Seattle, so we decided to drive to a mountain approximately halfway in between. It turns out Mt McLoughlin in southern Oregon is near the midway point, which is around 8 hours drive for each of us.

Camping on the side of McLoughlin

Friday after work I immediately started driving south. I got delayed by snowy roads and eventually met Matthew at the Summit Sno Park shortly after midnight. The weather forecast wasn’t great but we decided to still give McLoughlin a shot the next morning. We headed up shortly after sunrise, following ski tracks that soon disappeared. We then broke trail up in snowshoes.

Near the edge of treeline around 7,200ft we dropped overnight gear and continued up lighter. When we emerged above treeline at 8,200ft the wind had picked up really strong and it was snowing, making for whiteout conditions. It didn’t seem to safe to proceed, so we bailed back to camp. That night we had a roaring campfire.

Hiking down from Brown Mtn

Sunday morning it was still windy and snowing, and forecast to get worse over the day. So we broke camp and hiked back to the trailhead. Across the valley was another peak, Brown Mountain, that was just low enough to be completely below treeline. So we set that as our new objective.

We snowshoed through deep snow, trying to follow a trail to the summit. But the trail was impossible to discern so we ended up pretty much going straight up. We reached the summit be mid afternoon, and luckily it was sheltered from the wind and blowing snow. Across the valley we saw McLoughlin was still stuck in clouds, though.

We had a quick hike back, then cooked dinner at the trailhead. We car camped that night before driving back home early Monday morning.