14er Art : UN13471 and Browns Peak

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

UN13471 and Browns Peak - July, 2025

A group of preachers from our church plus James wanted to do a climb of 14er Huron Peak this summer. I had climbed Huron twice before and wanted to do an alternate (Lulu gulch) route that included three 13ers as well as Huron. I assumed the guys would be cool with me just hiking alone and then meeting them on the Huron summit, but turns out most of them wanted to just do all 4 with me. Then, when we found that only one of them just wanted to do Huron and not the other peaks, we changed plans and decided to hike most of the trip together. This way, I could split off and do Browns and UN 13,471 while the rest summited Huron. That ended up being a better choice because we got to have some good bonding time during the hike debating denominational issues and telling dad jokes.

Markos has a cool rooftop tent setup that we used. It says it's for 5 people, but the 4 of us were pretty packed in there. Usually the number of people a tent says it can sleep is a generous number and you should subtract one or two if you want to be comfortable.

About as close as four straight men can get

We started at sunrise the next morning and made good time up the switchbacks. Once we reached what looked like a good branching point I left the trail and headed up the talus slope toward Browns. The terrain was not as steep as it looked and the hike was fairly pleasant. It was quick work to the unnamed peak from Browns and back. Then I descended back to a pond that we said we would meet at thinking the guys would be down there waiting on me. Turns out they took their sweet time on the Huron summit and I actually waited for an hour and a half for them to return. Were we able to communicate somehow, I might have just climbed up to meet them on Huron's summit. Oh well. It's always nice to get a few hours of solitude in the mountains.