The past weekend, we planed to climb these two mountains in Southern Oregon. I took off from Redmond at around 3:30 PM and the traffic was terrible. It was 7:30 when I arrived Hillsboro. I jumped on Tian’s car and off we went. I had some take out fast food on the car. 1:20 AM, we arrived at the trail head of Mt Thielsen. We set up tent and slept at the parking lot. We got up at 6 AM the next morning, had some simple breakfast. Just before we took off, there arrived several cars. We started off from the trail head at around 7 AM. The trailhead is across Hwy 138 from Diamond Lake, approaching the mountain from the west side. The trail is very well maintained. We can walk side by side without any problem. The first 4 miles climb moderately. By 8:40 AM, we were at the junction of PCT (elevation 7300 feet), where the trail becomes a steep scramble onto the west ridge.

The timberline is at around 8000 feet. The west ridge is covered with loose scree. By 10:30AM, we are close to the summit rock.

After some more scrambling, we are at the base of the summit rock, where we need to traverse to the south east face. There is a notch here. That’s where the climb begins.

This is a view of the east ridge from the notch.

The south east face looks steep, but actually not very exposed therefore less scary.

We spent some time studying the south face, trying to figure out a route and setting up anchors. Meanwhile, a group of 3 made their way up and climbed without rope. We began our climb at around 11:00 AM. I belayed Tian from the base. After he set up an anchor at the top, I climbed with the protection of a pair of prusik cords. By 12:10 PM, we were both at the summit of Mt Thielsen. The summit area is big enough to accomodate 6-8 people comfortably. There is a summit registration. We even found a school ID left by a student.

We had hoped to see Crater Lake from the summit. However, the rim of the lake is very high. We only had a very small glimpse of the lake.

We took some pictures, chatted with a lady from Portland and descend our way down to the base. By 1:30 PM, we packed our gears and headed down. This is a view of the mountain from the junction of PCT. The slope on the right is the southeast face. The notch can be barely seen from this picture. We hiked the last 4 miles in 70 minutes and were back at the trail head before 5 PM. We both doubt that section is 4 miles coz there is no way we can hike that fast.

After a dinner at Medford (fast food again :(), we drove to the trail head of Mt McLaughlin. It was already dark when we arrived. There were quite a few cars there. There is a nice camp ground in the woods. We picked a flat area and set up the tent. We were both deprived of sleep and went to sleep very quickly. I was waken up by some loud constant noise at 4:30 AM and it took me a while to realize it was rain. We knew there is a 40% chance of rain on Sunday but didn’t know it’d be such a big deal. I worried about the weather and it took me some time to get back to sleep. We both got up at 6 AM and it was still raining. We got out of the tent and took a look at the sky. Hopeless. The cloud is very thick and extensive. We had some breakfast and broke camp. There was a very small time window the rain almost stopped. I had some hope, but soon extinguished by even heavier rain. We eventually decided we would bail. There is no safe way to make to the top since it’d be very wet on the rocks above the timberline. It was 45 degrees at the trail head. It must be snowing on the top, 3700 some feet higher.