A Mummy
Range
Adventure 2021
The north face of Mount Ypsilon
I am well aware that what I'm doing is not par cularly good for me, jogging up the middle of a paved road in the dark. This me it's Highway 34, west of Estes Park, leading to the Fall River Entrance of RMNP, on a calm, cool summer morning. Bond Park, in downtown Estes, was well lit but completely deserted when I started at 2:30 a.m. I'm sure that humans were not meant to run on hard smooth surfaces, taking thousands of iden cal steps, mile a er mile. Our hips, knees and lower backs wear out. Osteoarthri s is epidemic among baby boomers who have trained and raced on pavement for years. My genera on alone provides long-term job security for legions of orthopedic surgeons who replace worn out joints and fuse lumbo-sacral spine segments. Knowing all this, it's s ll hard to deny the charm of tro ng up the middle of this wide right-of-way for
seven miles in the so darkness without a single automo ve disturbance. Lawn Lake Trailhead, about 4:00 a.m: S ll quite dark so I tap the headlamp and start up the trail, high-stepping over rocks and log checks. Lawn Lake is a bit over 6 miles away but I won't be going there today. About 5 miles up I'll turn right, onto the Black Canyon Trail, follow it east for a quarter mile then angle le up the southeast shoulder of Mummy Mountain in my a empt to summit all of the Mummy Range Peaks before returning to town later in the day. This is a tour I first did 45 years ago at age 25. Memory has been shown to be a selec ve, crea ve phenomenon that may not always match reality. Therein lies a hazard: Aging endurance athlete underes mates the difficulty and magnitude of an adventure, relying on the memories of his younger,
