Phil and Karen's Adventures: Attempt 2 - Mummy Mountain, Mt. Charleston

Sadly, I will just start out by saying, there is going to be an attempt 3. You can read attemp 1 here. You are reading this from two very sad hikers who were more than up to the Mummy Mountain challenge this time, but mother nature had other plans. We will try to keep this as upbeat as possible, but we are both very frustrated that we are going to have to dedicate yet another weekend to trying to reach the Mummy Mountain Summit. It's not that we don't enjoy the hike, but it's very disappointing because we have lots of other peaks in our area we want to hike, and even more outside of the city. Unfortunately, Karen works 2 weekends of the month. Now that we have upped our difficulty to 10 mile hikes, it is hard for us to do two hikes on the Saturday and Sunday back to back and so we will have spent 6 total weeks waiting to conquer Mummy Mountain. If you knew our conquering personalities, this is a bitter wait as you can see the full Mummy from Las Vegas. Phil looks at it all the time with a sigh.

Anyways, back to describing our adventure. Just as our blog is named, Phil and Karen had quite an adventure on this hike. We started at the same trail head, Trail Canyon, and parked in the lot off of Echo Canyon Road. This time it was much much cooler at the start of the hike. It was only 67 degrees to start, compared to the 80's we started in last time. It was only 52 degrees at our car when we finished. We made very quick work of the first 2 miles to get to the North Loop Trail junction. It took us about an hour and we weren't too winded at all. At the North Loop Junction, we began to notice the rain we had seen to the south was moving more towards our direction. We powered along, past the man-made water trough called Cave Spring, and did almost a horseshoe from the North Trail Junction. We reached our next destination- the scree slope in only about 45 more minutes.

At the scree slope is when the heavier rain had started to fall. About a mile before the scree slope, we passed a bunch of hikers putting on their ponchos. Sadly, we didn't have any ponchos. We had an emergency heat blanket, a signaling mirror, and a hodge podge first aid kit, but no ponchos. At the bottom of the scree slope you are about 3 to 3.3 miles into the hike and we had a decision to make. It's probably about another mile to the summit, but a large climb (We don't know exactly how long to the summit since we are still waiting for our next opportunity). Neither of us wanted to decide to turn back so we continued and tried to climb the scree slope. During the climb, the rain got heavier and heavier and we became very cold, as our poncho-less clothing got soaked. A little over half way up the scree, we decided to go under a thick tree and see if the rain would pass. We whipped out the emergency heat blanket, but it was pretty much useless. The wind blew it around and blew under the thin Mylar type sheet. It was advertised as a two person blanket, but we were so cold, lacked dexterity, and were fighting with the wind, so we couldn't quite make it fully cover us both. We were semi warm where our shoulders touched and that was it.

Under the tree is when we realized we couldn't continue. Not only were we already freezing cold, but we had at least 500 ft to gain in elevation and would only be getting colder. We were also looking straight out over Mt. Charleston and saw nothing but rain and dark clouds. Even the close peak off of the Trail Canyon hike was fogged by rain and barely visible. We saw nothing but having to go down the rest of the hike in pouring rain, so we decided we can not continue up another mile, and then down 4.5-5 miles in soaking rain and so we descended the scree slope. Descending was tricky because all the trees on the ground were wet and slick as ice. At this point, the prepared hikers with the ponchos had caught up to the bottom of the scree and they were going to be turning back as well. They were relieved when we said we were also calling it a day.

Soaking wet and freezing, we decided we may as well run down as far as we could to decrease our time in the storm. It was a brand new experience for both of us, running down a mountain with your pants stuck to your legs, your shoes soaking wet, soggy, and loose, and trying not to trip and break your arm. We also had very heavy packs on since 3L each of water was unnecessary with the colder weather. Being soaking wet and miserable, it didn't cross our minds to dump some of the superfluous water until well over a mile into running. We ran just past the junction to get to the trail canyon trail. At that point, Karen tripped on a rock and narrowly avoided falling (she kept getting pebbles in her shoes.) Phil also insisted that running was colder than walking due to the wind it caused, so we walked the rest of the way down dripping wet.

The only pictures we got were near the time when we decided to start walking down instead of running. It was only a light sprinkle so Phil braved it with his brand new camera and got a few good shots of the storm, and a few of our soaking wet selves. His hands were so cold he could barely get his camera out of the bag because his thumbs and fingers lacked all dexterity. We also got a few shots with an iPhone when we were hiding under the tree on the scree slope. I guess better than last time when we got lost and didn't bother to take any pictures.

As we finished the last mile down, the rain really picked up again and the thunder started. Not that we wanted to get any wetter, but it did make us feel better about abandoning the hike, at least the weather was still crappy and we didn't turn back for nothing. It was the safe thing to not continue, but it wasn't what we wanted to do at all. Finishing the hike, we were pretty down and had to remind ourselves we still completed an almost 7 mile hike, climbed 3,000 feet and made amazing time to the scree. We also started earlier than usual and got to say "Good Morning" to the other hikers without any pause or hesitation, unlike our usual starting time. We both know that our hiking conditioning has increased significantly by the ease that we hiked today and think that next time we will definitely bag Mummy's Tummy.