the mummy (mountain)

29 Jun the mummy (mountain)

Now that I’m a bit over halfway done with my internship, I’ve become much more familiar with the park. On weekends I explore different parts of the park while on weekdays I explore more of Wild Basin. Since I’ve been here, I’ve had the chance to go on many hikes throughout the park, however, none compare to the one I did a week ago. Determined to summit Mummy Mountain in the mummy mountain range, I got up early and arrived at the Lawn Lake Trailhead. I proceeded on the Lawn Lake trail for a little more than 5 miles, then I got on a different trail- this is where it got tricky. While the second trail brings you closer to Mummy Mountain, in order to summit the mountain you have to veer off that trail onto an unofficial trail which uses cairns to guide you. The cairns guide you out of the forest into the tundra. Following this, you have to scramble up the steep mountain side for around two miles till you reach the summit. While this doesn’t sound that bad, it was extremely challenging. The last two miles had an elevation gain of around 2,000 feet and because of the terrain I had to basically climb the side of the mountain. Paired with strong cold winds and numerous false summits, this “hike” (more like a climb) proved to be one of the tougher ones I’ve ever done. While I was not expecting this hike to be particularly easy, I didn’t expect it to be as hard as it was. Overall, the hike was 16 miles with 5,000 ft of elevation gain. Even though this hike was pretty tough, it’s prepared me to start tackling the 14ers in the region.

For my project, we’ve worked up to Ouzel Falls (close to 3 miles away from the trailhead) and now we’re working up to Thunder Lake (around 6 miles away from the trailhead). Last Thursday, Paige and I hiked up to Thunder Lake to install a trail counter. The lake itself was absolutely gorgeous, however due to poor weather conditions, we had to hustle down back to the trailhead. Unfortunately, we’re beginning to enter thunderstorm season in the mountains so its becoming more and more difficult to have long research days. Although the poor weather poses some challenges, I know we’ll find ways to work around it.

Thanks for reading! Attached are some pictures from my hikes throughout Estes