We are not morning hikers and often pass many people coming down from a summit as we are just starting our journey up. Our journey this morning began just before 11am and it was sweltering hot down at the start. We parked at the Trail Canyon Trailhead off of Echo Road. Our beginning ascent was very sweaty and hot, but every now and then we would get a breeze and get the motivation to keep plugging along. Less than a mile in, Karen had to stop and attend to a beginning blister, but she was fully prepared with a package of moleskin. Our feet both got a few wounds by the end.
Since we had wanted to do this hike for quite a while, we had several sources to guide us along the way. Our primary reference was Afoot and Afield: Las Vegas and Southern Nevada: A Comprehensive Hiking Guide by Brian Beffort, a new hiking book Phil got for his birthday. We also had a general hike printout from http://www.birdandhike.com/Hike/Mt_Char/Mummy_E/_Mummy_E.htm , which we figured out on the trail was to get to Mummy Mountain from the raintree hike (we previously hiked Raintree here), so that guide had to be abandoned since we started elsewhere. Finally, we had a topographic map of the Spring Mountains, a hardy and waterproof map Karen picked up from REI. Surprisingly, the topographic map did not have the trail marked to get to Mummy Mountain.
We reached our first turn onto the North Trail headed towards Charleston Peak at about 1.6 miles according to our GPS. This is when our doubts about the GPS began since the book we were using for directions stated we would reach it at 2 miles, but we continued on the North Trail and our next landmark was to be Cave Springs. We passed several hikers coming down and were warned about some red Star Nursery Flags a ways up. The red flags left us puzzled because when you looked to the right, there was nothing but a huge cliff, so we decided this could not possibly be the scree we needed and carried on looking for the Cave Spring (which was in the book and on the topographic map).
We had several mishaps, but not finding Cave Spring had to be one of the main things that led us astray. Along our journey, just past the red flags, we passed a water trough with a pipe. We never in a million years thought this man-made water trough could actually be Cave Spring. Later, after researching more, that water trough was Cave Spring. Silly that it would be on the map as a spring, and even more silly that the book wouldn't point out that Cave Spring was actually a little man-made watering hole.
Not finding Cave Spring really set us back, but we carried on along the North Trail. After quite a while, we passed a hiker coming down who was really nice and she indicated that we had a few more switchbacks and we would reach the scree. She was really nice, but this is another point we were led astray. She also gestered up towards Charleston Peak as where we would find the scree and somewhat led us to believe we had quite a ways to go to get there. So we kept on going and going and going. Karen took a short break to eat some granola not long after we passed this hiker. This is funny, and you will see why later!
After lots and lots of switchbacks and many miles, we came upon a scree!! During all those miles we kept referencing our book. We probably took it out of the backpack no less than 10 times and we kept saying to ourselves, does this look like a stand of dead trees just past a limestone cliff to the east?? That's how the book described where we would find the scree to ascend to the mummy's tummy. Unfortunately for us, there are stands of dead trees and limestone cliffs EVERYWHERE along the North Trail. So each of the 10 times we pulled out the book, we kept wondering which could possibly be the right stand of dead trees!!! We even questioned how many miles it was taking us to get to the magical stand of dead trees, but since our GPS gave us a mismatched mileage earlier, we ignored it.
So finally, we get to a scree. And it is so easy! Easiest scree compared to what we had read about a dreadful scree on this blog. So we had doubts about the effortlessness with which we climbed this baby scree that we'd heard dreadful things about. We climbed it in about 2 minutes (big warning sign) and we just keep on walking along until we come upon a precipitation guage from the USGS and think, hmmm, have we made it??? There was an ammo box with a log in it that a few other people had signed, but it was like less than 20 people in a year. Most of the people that had signed the log were either a part of the USGS inspecting/checking on the precipitation guage or hikers that mentioned heading on to Charleston Peak or Mummy Mountain. BAD sign since we had hiked and hiked and thought we had reached the mummy's tummy.
We carried on along the ridge, did some scrambling and had faint hope we could take this ridge to the tummy. Needless to say, it was a no go. Phil and I did some dangerous scrambling up and down the sharpest rocks trying to salvage our way to our destination. After a while, we finally got to a point where we could see a brown slope that was obvisouly the actuall scree up the our intended destination, it was no joke of a scree. We were already at the top of the scree, but there was a huge hike ahead to get to the top of the tummy. We stat down defeated. We had been hiking over 4 hours and what lied ahead to salvage our mission was just too much. We didn't have enough food or water (we carried 3 liters each already) to hike for 10 hours, we didn't have enough energy to make a 12-13 mile hike and there were ominous storm clouds all over Mt Charleston, but lots above Mummy Mountain.
Running through both our minds was if we should continue on or go back. We reached the same decision silently and decided to eat our PB&Js and then make our journey down. The journey down was full of sliding through loose rocks and mountain debree along an angle to get to the real scree so that we could find our way back without doing the extra miles that we had taken to get to where we were. Our ankles were screaming by the time we got to real trail to descend.
This is probably the saddest part of the whole journey. At the bottom of the real scree, we came across a marker that should have been a dead giveaway to mark our scree for ascencion. A giant dead tree with an M carved into it and an arrow pointing up!!! Why did the book not say this?? Why did the hiker not say this?? And ironiclly, it was literally 200 feet from where Karen had stopped to eat her granola earlier!
Not too much more to the story, except that we hiked down with aching knees, aching ankles, aching backs, and a bit of a defeated feeling since we didn't "bag the peak" (as Phil would joke). The weather was much cooler along our hike up and hike down and the rain that started really felt great. We got to finsh our hike with thunder sounds in the moutain, the smell of rain that reminded us of our dear Allegany, and cool rain drops on our hot skin.
While we didn't get to the mummy's tummy, we did hike 8.5 miles for 6 hours and we did climb 3100 feet, which is by far our longest hiking acomplishment thus far. We also have a thirst to go back and really bag the tummy.
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| We were too depressed about not making the peak to take our own pictures, so you will have to wait until we actually make it to the Mummy's Tummy for some of our views.
Our GPS battery died so we do not have the complete GPX, but here is the link to the partial GPX of our failed summit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yht1i0ninh75tak/Mummy%20failed%20GPX.gpx
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