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Peak(s)  Brown Mountain  -  13,347 feet
Date Posted  09/22/2024
Date Climbed   09/21/2024
Author  WildWanderer
 From Gold King Mine   

Brown Mountain – 13,347


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RT Length: 1.02 miles

Elevation Gain: 425’


Warning: This is a bit of a whiny post. I parked at the Gladstone Mine off 110 outside of Silverton and contemplated my options for the hike the next day. The weather forecast was calling for rain and snow the next morning, but amounts and times were varying. I don’t like driving up 4WD roads. It’s not the driving, it’s the oncoming drivers I don’t like. This looked like a popular road, and I wanted to avoid oncoming vehicles. I decided to spend the night in my truck at the junction with 110 and 10 near the Gladstone Treatment Plant and Gold King Mine and make my final hiking decision the next morning.


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I woke up at 4am the next morning to clear skies, but it was cold and windy. I warmed up in my truck for a bit before starting my hike. I got about 100 yards into the hike and said, “this is too windy for me!” and hiked back to my truck to warm up. The wind chill was bitter cold.


The past few weeks had been difficult for me mentally. I’d done a lot of backpacking and had to turn around on a lot of peaks due to the weather. I homestead (basically, if I don’t raise it, shoot it, or grow it, I don’t eat it), and I have difficulty eating while hiking/backpacking. While I get a lot of protein, I don’t get a lot of fat in my diet.


Last week my husband got 2 elk, so I took a break from backpacking to help him process the meat (it’s a lot of meat to process, and we do it ourselves). When he saw me again after being gone for a while he mentioned I’d lost about 10 pounds and needed to put on more weight. To put it in perspective, I weighed 105 pounds before and was down to 95 pounds. At 5’4”, this isn’t a good thing. I don’t have the fat reserves to keep me warm, which is a major problem with my Raynaud’s. I tried to bulk up when I was home, but I wasn’t able to gain 10lbs in 2 days.


Losing weight and having a handful of failed summits that I should have been able to climb (darn weather!) put me in a moody mental state. So, this morning I was unconsciously looking for any excuse to just go home. The cold, windy, and potentially snowy weather was giving me that excuse. I knew the wind was blowing in a storm that would hit full force later that day. That’s why I chose something easy for today: I didn’t want to get stuck in a storm. I sat in my truck for a bit trying to will myself to get out and hike when I decided to just drive up the dirt road to see how bad it would be. After all, it was now 5am, and I’d most likely be the only one on the road. I headed up 10:


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For those of you wondering, the road isn’t that bad. It’s doable in a high clearance 2WD with a capable driver. I followed the road 3.68 miles north to an unnamed pass at 12900’ to the east of Lake Como. (For those of you hiking this, it’s 2419’ of elevation gain). This is a bit of a shelf road in areas, but it’s wide and there are plenty of places to pass oncoming vehicles.


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There was a parking area at the pass, so I parked and sat in my truck, waiting for the sun to come up. I could hear the wind howling all around me, shaking my truck back and forth. I wanted to use the restroom and tried to open my truck door. The wind immediately slammed it shut. My mind said: “not today” and I drove halfway back down the road, intending to just head back home.


Hiking can be very mental, and knowing this can keep you going when you really want to quit. In the time it took me to get halfway down the road I’d talked myself into driving back to the pass. After all, it had been dark and I didn’t even have a visual of the peak yet. The least I could do was get a visual, and then decide. So, I drove back up to the pass.


I sat there and waited for the sun to rise and the wind to die down. As soon as I could see the mountain, I realized it would be a very quick and simple summit from this saddle. I told myself the only reason it was so windy was because I was on the saddle: As soon as I ascended, the wind would surely stop. I could brave the suck for a few minutes, right? At 6:35am I left my truck and headed up the ridge.


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This is a very straightforward hike, entirely class 2. I ascended the tundra to the ridge, turned left, and ascended the shale and then tundra again to the summit.


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Halfway up the ridge I came to a game trail and followed it west.


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Once on the ridge, I turned left and followed it south to the summit. It started out as rocky, then turned to tundra.


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The summit is marked by an obvious cairn.


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I summited Brown Mountain at 6:50am and could not feel my fingers. As you can hear in the video, the wind never let up, but once I got started I kept telling myself I’d be a fool not to finish because the summit was RIGHT THERE, and I’d be in sight of my truck the entire time. I may be frozen when I made it back to the truck, but at least I could turn the heat on and warm up as soon as I got there.


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Brown Mountain:


I didn’t stay too long at the summit. I turned around and headed back the way I’d ascended, my truck below in sight the entire time.


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I made it back to my truck at 7:05am, making this a 1.02 mile hike with 425’ of elevation gain in 30 minutes. If you do this hike from Gold King Mine, it’s 8.38 miles with 2844’ of elevation gain. (Map includes drive up the 4WD road)


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Then I drove back down to Gladstone and Gold King Mine. In any event, long story short, hiking is very mental. Knowing how to talk yourself into a hike is a great asset, especially when you're not 'feeling it', as long as you have a backup plan and don't put yourself in a dangerous situation. It's always the right decision to turn around and go back, but sometimes you need to dig deep and push on. I needed an easy win today for my mental state. Once again, easy hike, but it would have been easier to have just given up and gone home.


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On to the next trailhead!




Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
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Comments or Questions
Sluglas
User
Mental
9/23/2024 5:36am
Good job toughing it out. As I get older I don't like doing stuff when its not fun (I already have a job), but sometimes the fun is in the result, not the process.

And when did you get married?


WildWanderer
User
Agreed!
9/23/2024 7:56am
I now have another story to remind myself starting is often the most difficult part; fun or a great experience almost always follows. I got married over the summer. He'd been asking me to marry him for 5 years, so when I finally said 'yes' he didn't want to wait and we got married pretty quickly, and then I immediately left to go backpacking for the next few months (but he knew this about me...lol!).


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