Hiking – Brainard Lake Rec Area - Mitchell Lake TH - Mt Audubon

Clockwise loop from Mitchell Lake Trailhead up Paiute via Blue Lake then a traverse to Mt Audubon and return to Mitchell Lake Trailhead via Mt Audubon Trail.  You should be comfortable with the altitude and some exposure.  

We will go up the long and steep scree field to Paiute.  This is universally not enjoyable and an energy-suck. If the team all have helmets, we may avoid this by scrambling up the adjacent Boulder field. We then traverse from Paiute to Audubon over the east ridge of Paiute connecting to the west ridge of Audubon. This ridge connection is all very rocky. There are no great obstacles or clefts along this ridge, but plenty of large, broken rocks to navigate around or over, and plenty of just plain old rubble. This is mainly 2+, but with exposure for the ~1hr traverse (remember, even for Class 2+ the risk of serious injury from falls or hazards is medium to significant).  For a detailed description see the myriad of resources such as AllTrails or Climb13ers.

These resources provide good beta, but you must have the experience, and be comfortable/confident with this level of exposure.  Alpine Scrambling Course or similar is a good base.  

This is a Bobcats Section Hike.

The Bobcats’ mission is to ensure a variety of challenging CMC trips, mostly on weekdays, all year long, for our mostly 50+ constituents. We don’t have dues or elections and we invite ALL CMC members to sign up for any Bobcat trip. You can search the CMC Calendar for Bobcat trips any time by selecting “Bobcats Section” in the CMC Trip Calendar “Section pull-down menu. We email a monthly newsletter to our members with all the coming month’s trips, just after those trips are activated. To join our free mailing list and become a member, select the Bobcats Section anytime in your Member Profile.

6:00am at the Brainard Lake Winter Lot. We will shuttle from there to the Mitchell Lake Trailhead (I have permits/passes for 2 cars).