Mt McLoughlin

Hike up Mt McLoughlin Wed July 18.

Meet at the trailhead at 9am. Turn north from 140 on 4 mile lake road (dirt but graded) and after a few miles it's on the left. My minivan will be at the turn off where it's possible to park without a trailhead fee/tax. It's also possible to camp there which I may do Tuesday night. Since I'm coming from Klamath Falls I'll leave it to people in the Rogue Valley to carpool amongst themselves.

For me this is a combination of getting in shape, seeing what shape I'm in, and trying out some rather heavy mountaineering boots I need later in the summer. So we will not be breaking any speed records, although I hope to keep a reasonable overall pace. The elevation gain is 4000'. The trail up to treeline is good, above treeline there is a fair amount of boulder hopping but no serious exposure. There may be patches of snow on the trail to cross but by now they should not present much of a problem. (It may be possible to ski down the north side and it can be a nice run, but anyone who does want to do that is on their own once they start down!)

I'm not estimating a return time and don't care too much about it, but it will be well before dark. If you need to be somewhere by a certain time this is probably not a good trip for you on this day. I won't rush the group to be back by a certain time.

Bring appropriate footwear, some lunch/snack food, and a headlamp or flashlight. (The light shouldn't be needed and is just in case! But you really should always have one along anyway.) Sunscreen and perhaps mosquito repellent might be good ideas, I don't know what the mosquito situation is like right now.

If you have any questions about footwear, what to bring, how to find the trailhead, etc you can post something here or send me a message of text me at 541-880-6799. If you have any questions please ask before hand!

Edit #1 - Dogs

I didn't think about dogs when I first wrote the description, but this is not a dog friendly trip, It's national forest and they are permitted but the boulder field above treeline is not good for most dogs. Some can manage it but even then it's not a nice thing to subject them to.

Edit #2 - Photos

Here are a couple photo galleries from past hikes. The first was last October, ascending for moonrise, and was posted for the meet-up. The actual summit was in a cloud so I skipped it but went almost to the top. The second is from a June hike up with a ski descent on the north side. That trip was also happened to be during the annual butterfly migration. (Another year on Mt Jefferson this was in July, so you never know!)

http://www.snowman-jim.org/climbing/gallery2/v/2011-10-13-mcloughlin/

http://www.snowman-jim.org/climbing/gallery2/v/2007-06-21-mcloughlin/

There are a couple other galleries from ski trips also, which were winter or early spring with no hiking and not via the summer trail.