FKT: Emily Keddie, Kyle Runyon - Mt. McLoughlin Circumnavigation (OR) - 2020-10-07

We did the circumnavigation after the summit, as we were attempting both FKT’s. As in Ashly’s route, we did not do a true car to car, instead following her lead and hiking in 1.4 miles to the Summit trailhead so we would have two separate tracks. I tracked each part separately while Kyle tracked the whole route as one. 
We felt the clockwise direction was good, as it was a longer downhill and the pavement was downhill. That 8.5-mile stretch was tough, and doing it CCW would have meant running into the sun as well. We cached water at the end of that segment, because there was not much water beyond the Fish Lake resort restroom, which was still open. There was water at twin lakes, but that would make a very long dry stretch (~17 miles).
The most unexpected part of the route was the bushwhack- I don’t know if the route creator knew that the segment of trail to the north is not a trail in existence- I’ve run a lot of unmaintained trails, but this one actually doesn’t exist anymore for about 2 miles. On either end it’s quite bushwhacky as well. You need to be able to navigate well for this section, and we were slowed down quite a bit. It was a huge relief to get back to the PCT!