Date: Sunday- Monday, August 9 – 10, 2020

Miles: 12.1 miles

Elevation Gain: 1382 feet

Difficulty: Moderate (backpacking)

Time: 6 hr 30 min total

Trail Head:

https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/wyoming/browns-peak-loop-in-snowy-range

Notes:

Southern Wyoming is so beautiful– one of my friends planned a girls backpacking trip in the Medicine Bow-Rout National Forest to finish out the summer. This loop is a great easy to moderate backpacking loop, that features beautiful views of the Snowy Range and multiple alpine glacial lakes. You could also do this as a long day hike, just make sure to pack extra supplies in case the weather turns bad. There are multiple entry points for this loop, we chose the most direct trail head, Brooklyn Lake. The night before we car camped right at the trail head (we saw multiple shooting stars).

We chose to do the loop clockwise, in order to get past the boulder section before potential afternoon storms. The trail is narrow and steadily gains elevation at the beginning, before evening out at the first lake. We passed too many lakes to count or name them all in the first four miles before we stopped for lunch by Gap Lakes. Many of these lakes had people fly fishing– seems like a good spot! After Gap Lakes (4 miles), the trail begins to climb in elevation and gets rocky by South Gap Lake. The next quarter mile is pretty rocky and requires some route finding and careful footing. It felt a bit difficult with a heavy backpack, but it would have probably been fine without a pack. Once past the boulder field, the trail turns left at the junction of Shelf Lake trail. From there, the trail flattens out and snakes through alpine tundra.

We hiked about 8 miles to Sheep Lake, where we set up camp near the first large lake. The water was not ideal for filtering, so I probably would camp at a different location in the future. The next morning we packed up camp and hiked a little over 4 miles back to the trail head. Our first mile (mile 9 from loop) gained elevation steadily, offering expansive views of Sheep Lakes. Once we got to North Twin Lakes, the trail began to descend back to the trail head. There were so many beautiful wildflowers on this loop! We also did not see that many other people– the people that we did pass were mostly other backpackers.