Fred decided that he would take advantage of a perfect weather forecast to take on the Mummy Range for yesterday's church run. Nine of us joined him.

We ended up with a strong group of experienced trail runners. I was the oldest/least experienced, and the slowest member of the group. While we did it in trail running mode there was little actual running involved.

No alpine start for us; we hit the trail at 9:03 a.m. We made short work of the first three easy peaks, summitting Ypsilon around 11:20. Weather was perfect albeit quite windy.

Fairchild was next. I am not a strong scrambler, but had climbed Fairchild once before so at least I knew more or less what to expect. My recollection was that there was some class 3, but the line that I choose never exceeded class 2+. Still, given my less than stellar scrambling skills and the fact that I hadn't been eating enough I was moving slowly, accompanied by Fred who hung back with me. We met the rest of the gang on the summit.

On to Hagues. I got a little behind on the downhill - again my relative lack of facility on off-trail terrain, even though the climb down Fairchild is just class 2. I started up Hagues, and made a mistake. Instead of following the group, I veered right, relying upon a recent forum thread which suggests that you can keep it to class 2+ by going right. But I went right much too soon. I got seriously off route and had to backtrack. I had cell service and texted Fred my situation. I headed more or less straight up towards the summit on steep grass. Fred called me & I told him that I was headed up. A couple hundred vertical feet from the summit I saw Fred who waved me on. The terrain got rockier/steeper, class 2+ then class 3 but not exposed. I continued up. With maybe 50 vertical feet to go Laura came down to help guide me up. After some more class 3 and one short stretch of class 4 I was on the summit, joining the group who unfortunately had been waiting for over 40 minutes.

We headed down to Rowe lake planning to hit Rowe Peak and Rowe Mountain. At that point two of us, myself and Jean, decided to skip the Rowes. Fred accompanied us. We climbed back onto the ridge between Hagues and Mummy. The ridge was long, just class 2 rock hopping but by then we were a little tired & it got a bit tedious. The short climb to the summit of Mummy was a nice change after all of the rock hopping.

We knew that other 7 of us were fully capable of following on their own, and we saw them on the ridge between Hagues and Mummy, and, partly to accommodate my slower pace, we headed down. We got part way down & saw them following us. Justin caught the 3 of us shortly before timber line. We regrouped at timber line, headed down through the trees on a social trail, and then headed back to the trail head on the Black Canyon and Lawn Lake trails. Back at the trail head at 10:03, exactly 13 hours after starting. A slow traverse, especially given that we were in trail running mode, largely a product of my poor scrambling skills and my mediocre speed on rocky class 2 terrain. Despite that it was a great day in the mountains - no serious injuries, all ten of us finished, and fun was had by all.

https://www.strava.com/activities/2631660279