*NOTE: This page is modified and maintained by a separate
entity other than SoCalFunPlaces.com.
If you have any questions, comments,
complaints or gripes about this one page, feel free to contact Ryan. However, if you are going to email me requesting that I disclose the location of any of the below material...don't waste your time. I found all of these locations myself by using 1 of 2 methods: either wandering blindly through the backcountry for countless weekends OR countless hours of researching topographical maps & satellite aerial photos. The last resource being very useful and FREE! I get dozens of emails every month from folks who would rather have somebody tell them how to get to secret locations rather than just exploring the wilderness & finding these locations for themselves. Trust me, you'll get a pride-of-ownership feeling by finding these sites on your own. I also get dozens of emails from folks who would just like to chit chat. I like those ones. You guys can feel free to email me!
This page is best viewed with a monitor resolution of at least
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helps! Otherwise, wait for all the photos to show up; you'll be glad you did.
;)
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Mine tunnels, shafts, adits,
drifts, crosscuts, winzes, raises, and any workings which take you underground are
extremely dangerous features which occur very frequently all throughout
Southern
California. DO
NOT enter any mine without first gaining reliable, professional knowledge
about mines/mine hazards/geology. Even then, specific safety equipment
is required. Mine hazards include but are not limited to:
Unexploded
Ordinance (blasting caps, dynamite, TNT, blasting powder - often times
are burried in the dirt right beneath your feet),
Vertical Shafts (often times placed in the middle of the floor
& covered - VERY dangerous),
Unstable Ceilings/Walls (century-old
ceilings could
give at any moment - especially with the vibrations of your walking),
Common Falling Rocks (a rock the size of a peanut, falling from a couple
hundred feet up, can easily penetrate the unprotected skull causing instant
death),
Rotting Timber (not only does it weaken what it was supposed to be supporting,
it produces poisonous gasses which can be completely undetectable
until it's much too late)
Please don't take chances.
Mojave Desert
Ghost Towns, Mining Camps, Abandoned
Mines, Various California Adventures
The following is a comprehensive list of some of the different adventures that I, along with several of my closest friends, have taken since the year 2000 A.D.. Even though a lot of the locations that we have visited aren't actually in "SoCal", I felt that they are close enough & amazing enough that every adventure-seeking Californian should take a chance to get out, get dirty & really check out what this great state has to offer.
I doubt that I will settle down and start to do nothing on the weekends anytime soon so I can guarantee that this list will grow very large with the following years to come. I love to share my experiences so I always try to take pictures & give a detailed account of the areas we've explored.
Enough rhetoric, on to the adventures...
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Quick Launch: UPDATE!!!!! (3/22/07) - I took a couple year hiatus but I'm back! I have an 8 month old daughter now - (BEAUTIFUL) Kylee Jean McCormack - one of the reasons for the long hiatus! In the last year I have taken several great trips and I have a few planned for the following months. I'll be adding many more photos & stories soon so hang tight & get ready! I'll be updating the Stedman & Ragtown writeup with some great new finds out there. The Bagdad-Chase Mine was the largest producer of gold in all of San Bernardino County and I figured there should be more to see out there! Just a little searching is all it took. We also took a trip out near Stateline Nevada and found some huge underground workings tucked up in the hills. We'll need another trip back out there just to explore it. I've been using Google Earth a lot to just browse the desert from the air and let me tell you - it's a must have tool for any explorer! I've found hidden ghost towns, abandoned mining camps, and long-forgotten inhabitations just by searching...searching...searching. Click here for the updated writeups
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Lucerne Valley-
east of SH 247
One of the largest uninhabited stretches of BLM desert in Southern California.
Lucerne Valley, generally speaking, is a collection of several different
OHV areas whose boundries are from the base of the north side of Big
Bear/San Bernardino Mountains, north to Barstow & from just east
of the 15 freeway all the way to the Yucca Valley/Joshuah Tree area.
There is said to be around 200 different mining claims & around 100 various
little to huge petroglyph sites in the area. We have just barely scratched
the surface of what is to be found in this area & we have already spent
several
years
scrounging around here.
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| Looking north from high up on Ord Mountain. I took this picture while looking for the fabled petroglyph Springs that are in this canyon. I never made it. | This is Eriksen Dry Lake in Tyler Valley which is just to the south of Ord Mountain. This picture looks west toward West Ord Mountain. | This is a really cool little gazebo structure that we found out on Camp Rock Road. This spot is on the east side of Ord Mountain. |
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| These are the remains of a miners cabin up on the western slopes of Ord Mountain. This particular area was very heavily mined for gold & stone walkways pave paths all over the place here to give "easy" access to all the mine tunnels. | Here is one of the tunnels just above the cabin foundation. Unfortunately, my flashlight died first thing on this trip so I couldn't explore the tunnels. They went back much farther than I could safely travel I know that. I've yet to return to this area. | I found a tiny penlight in my car which worked very poorly so I was only able to travel about 100 yards into the mine. You can see from this picture that this tunnel has been filled halfway up with water at some points which isn't surprising since..... |
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| ...this tunnel, which was in the same area, had about 6+ inches of water sitting in the entrance. The water went back about 50 yards where it looked like it may have stopped, or there was a slight cave-in. Either way, I'd love to explore this tunnel via personal raft sometime! | This is the view at the entrance of the water-filled tunnel. This great view is looking in a west, north-westerly direction. The pool in the foreground had a metal sign telling how it was an important water resource for local animals. It says to not come within 600 feet of the pool....."sorry, Dept of Fish & Game"!! | Here is the entrance to the non water-filled tunnel. Markings all around the area identified this as the Circle T Mine. I can find ZERO mention of a Circle T mine anywhere on the net or elsewhere. Someday I am definitely coming back to this area....this time with a flashlight! |
a little place called Camp Skee
| While studying topographical maps of the Lucerne Valley / Rodman Mountains one day, I came across some symbols on the map which were unmistakable markings for structures & mine tunnels. There was also the word "cabin" next to the symbols, something which I haven't seen since on a map. Needless to day, my interest went through the roof & I packed up the adventure mobile & headed out to where Camp Rock Road strolls by the Rodmans. | |
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| To my surprise, there was already somebody else visiting this remote area. The cabin, which I'll rejoice, is STILL pretty much completely intact. Unfortunately it was being used as a personal camping spot so we only took pictures. Foundations of other cabins are scattered thru out the area. I date this place to be about 100 years old. | I'm sure this area gets little to no traffic all year long, this must have been like rush-hour on this particular day. It would be a great area to camp in for the weekend as it is the perfect base camp for any hiking, mine exploring, rock hounding, off-roading, petroglyph seeking, wildlife viewing adventure. |
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| This is a cool little tunnel on the opposite side of the ridge where the cabin is. It went about 1000 feet back into the hill where it shot straight up through a raise which reached the surface. | This small adit sits right next to where the cabin is. It only went back about 75 feet. |
Gold Belt Mine
| This is a mine that I read about in a great online article (hyperlink removed due to being taken down) . This mine was slightly disappointing; it's supposed to have 3 different levels with shafts & raises linking each level. The entrance that I found was a tiny (and unbelievably hazardous) hole in the ground which was dug into the hillside, right next to a large (and even more hazardous) shaft that was sunk straight down into the bowels of the mountain. Which, if you think about it, leads me to believe that the shaft lead to another lower level of this mine which I must have missed on the way up the mountain. A lengthily rappel down into this shaft would most likely reveal unexplored areas of this mine. It was still an adventure though, leading us about 900 feet into the heart of Goat Mountain. | |
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| Look closely....this is the hole you get to crawl into if you would like to enter this mine! NOTE fellow explorers: a caved in mine entrance usually indicates unstable material such as loose sand/rocks, weak tunnel walls and should send mental red flags in your mind telling you that another cave in is likely if you enter. We dove straight in. | This is just inside the entrance of the hole, you can see the light from the small opening in the background. Luckily the rest of the tunnel was at least 6 feet tall all the way back so it was easier to walk through than it was to enter. |
Rodman Mountains Petroglyph site
| The Rodman Mountain Petroglyph site is just one of those very very good reasons to get out NOW & explore the Mojave before prescious sites like this get discovered by idiots who see nothing wrong with demolishing & destroying historical property, ruining entire desert experiences for many people, forever. If you're caught altering these sites in any way these days, I believe it's about a $90,000 fine + possible jail time. That sounds just about fair to me. Luckily this particular site is relatively spotless, except for a couple recent crude scratchings in the rock which will be gone in a hundred years, these petroglyphs are in pristine condition. Some of them have been accurately dated back to about 10,000 years old. We know this to be a fact because there is a certain desert fungus that grows over the rocks in the desert. This fungus takes about 10,000 years to form and a few of the petroglyphs are completely covered in this fungus. They are extremely important in understanding how life even came to be in this part of the world, my favorite drawing is that of a 10,000 year old flying craft. Flying crafts are actually easy to believe considering that about 200 yards from this site, there are 2 rock formations built into the ground which can only be seen.....from the air. One rock "intaglio" is of a rams horn & the other of a boomerang. These intaglios are fenced in for their protection but it also makes them easy to find in this flat landscape. | ||
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| Here is the drawing that I believe to be that of a flying craft. It looks remarkably similar to a modern Cessna airplane, wouldn't you think? OR, maybe it's a diagram for advanced canal building techniques? Either way, it's a mystery. | Various etchings in the rock. Warriors with shields, spirals, bighorn sheep seemed to be the style of the day. |
I believe this is a "Chuckawalla" lizard. This guy was sunning himself next to the petroglyph canyon & he would only move when my encroaching fingers came into the picture (top-right). |
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| "I don't know, maybe a sunrise??" | Flower showing it's roots. Maybe implying that the knowledge of what life needs to survive was already known at that time...? | Another one. |
"The Underground City" - --- Mine, ----, CA New, improved & 100% censored for you looters!
**UPDATE** - the Underground City has been blasted shut by the property owners. Entrance into its underground workings is no longer possible. There isn't anything interesting to see outside either. Please do not email me asking about its location. The --- Mine in ---- definitely has been one of the most unbelievable experiences I've ever had while exploring underground places. This place is just huge. So huge in fact that the United States Government (Department of Defense) used the place as a Civil Defense Facility during the 1960's, turning it into a massive stockpile of drums of water & tins of biscuit mix to be used incase the pinkos nuked us! I don't think the Cuban Missile Crisis helped the situation out much either! All of the supplies were marked as being stocked in 1962....intriguingly close to that period of US history. **Update Note: Our government became "aware" of the Cuban Missle Crisis in October of 1962. After looking over the supplies from this fallout shelter again, they were marked as stocked in February 1962. Was the military actually aware of the goings on in Cuba & Russia - 8 months before they let on to it?? Facinating.** ---- is the town that sprang up next to the canyon where the mine is and that is where all the miners lived & all the offices that belonged to the mine were there. There is also a runway with the foundations of a control tower next to this ghost town. It was once a very large operation; mining Gypsum by the way. Nowadays, ---- is nothing more than a bunch of concrete slabs where the houses & offices & control towers used to be. In the winter months it gets "inhabited" by hordes of retirees sporting massive RV's& taking advantage of the beautiful scenery & mild winter climates. Some of them you can tell set up camp there for months. To get to the actual site of the --- Mine though, you pass through ---- & make your way back into the canyon behind the town site. Here you will find good camping with zero souls in site. |
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| This is actually the insanely treacherous entrance to the tunnels. To gain access to the mine, one must scramble down a massive incline shaft that was sunk at about 45+ degrees into the mountain. You could fit a family home inside the opening & the entire complex of tunnels pretty much keeps this scale. "HUGE". | A resting point in the maze of tunnels. They go up & over & down & out all over the place. There are 2 options in this photo alone! I'm sitting on the rock wearing a collared button-down dress shirt & under T-shirt with jeans on! What was I thinking?! It's like I was going to a job interview down there or something! There was quite a bit of writing on the walls as you can see in this pic. I never understood defacing property by painting crosses. What's the message?! | You can't really tell but at this point in the mine, we were climbing up a raise that was built at about a 30 degree angle. From where the picture was taken, the raise goes down about 600 feet to a lower tunnel. About 8 times along this shaft there were side-shutes which all had wooden ore-hoppers built into them. The rails in the pic carried a large machine, which is still halfway down the shaft, which moved up & down the tracks depositing loads of gypsum in the proper ore bins. At the top (behind the picture taker) there was a massive wench that pulled the machine on steel cables. VERY interesting operation. |
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| All along this tunnel there lay a large train track. The tunnel was large enough for a locomotive to roll through. All along the tracks there were incline shafts that sunk to the lower tunnels. If you feel as adventurous as we did that night, you'll scamper down these shafts & explore for hours & hours more. | Here is a great shot! This part of the mine had hundreds of yards of tunnels that were filled with 2 items of survival....tons of barrels of water & tons of tin boxes of "Survival Biscuit Mix". All the barrels of water were empty & rusted but there are still boxes upon boxes filled with biscuit mix tins. The string in the foreground is a power line which used to run the entire length of the mine. I don't condone taking anything from any mine but I'll have you know that there is a large shiny tin of "Survival Biscuit Mix" on display in my living room! I just had to. | Now right about here, a buddy of mine decided he needed to climb up a rusted piece of 50 year old metal pipe leading up a shute. The dark spot you see beyond is the night sky outside. There are countless places along the way in these tunnels where you come across a shaft which leads straight up & out into the open. This is very comforting news for anybody who is worried about poisonous gasses getting trapped down here. There is a nice breeze along these corridors which basically leaves NO time for gasses to collect. I love not having to fear sudden death by gas while exploring underground! |
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| Here is one of those shafts which lead straight up & out of the mine, revealing the sky beyond. It's actually a pretty cool sensation to have after crawling around subterranean tunnels all night long! The moon peaked through this particular shaft making for an interesting picture. | This side room housed some sort of winch contraption that pulled ore carts from the shafts below. | I believe this ore chute went up to the room where the winch contraption was held. |
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| This was a cool "street corner" that we came across. It came complete with a vintage style street light & hobo. | ...wandering countless miles upon miles of large mine tunnels... | Here we are climbing up into a large multi-shuted ore-hopping station. This is a small part of a large room which housed 4 of these stations. |
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Independence, CA
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Independence, California is a small town on Highway 395 between Bishop and Lone Pine, in the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains. I have gone to a small campground called Grays Meadows there ever since I was a little boy. The campground is situated right on Independence creek, just outside of town & it gives one of the best stream fishing experiences I have ever experienced in my life. Now mind you, I've lived in the Colorado Rockies & Washington State for a while too & Independence STILL crushes them all!!! Of course, it's all probably psychological, stemming from wonderful memories I have of the place but still...for me, it just can't be beat. There has been years when I've gone there & not a single fisherman in camp has caught a single fish, not even a bite, yet for some reason, I think I may know why, I always come out with my limit....before noon! Other years, such as last year (the unbelievable summer of 2002) every fisherman in camp catches their limit as well, but I will come out with the catch of the day. Last summer I landed the largest Rainbow Trout I have ever had the pleasure of wrestling at the end of a line. It was the first time I ever saw a metal tag from the DFG in a fishes lip! I think this place just knows who I am. Every spring I can lounge around the stream banks underneath the oversized pine trees next to the creek, listening to the breeze blow through them & just know that they are welcoming me back to yet another year of unbelievable experiences & unforgettable memories with my friends & family. Now that I am am a bit older & a bit more adventuresome, I have had the pleasure of exploring some of the back roads of the area & some of the great mines of the Inyo Mountains too. This is definitely a work in progress, I already have some very large mines in the area lined up to be explored....just as soon as the creek thaws out! |
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| You can see cinder cones like this & a lot of other evidence of volcanic activity while driving north on the 395. | This is Lower Grays Meadows in late winter. A bit too early for an enjoyable trip! The stream water was SO cold this time that when they stocked it wish fish, within 24 hours all the fish were floating belly up....dead from freezing to death! Wish I had a picture of THAT. This picture looks west at Independence Peak. | This is arguably the best the best camp site in Grays Meadows. It's the southern most campsite there. It's big, it's so close to the creek that you could roll into the water while sleeping & it's quite secluded. The only problem is that it's always the very first campsite to go. The only reason we got it this time was because like I said, it was a bit too early in the season & for the first time in my life, we were the ONLY campers in the entire area! |
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| There is a cool museum right in town here. It has a bunch of artifacts from the area including lots of indian |
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There is a cool spot on Independence Creek where the water is funneled through a cement shoot, pouring out into a small waterfall at the other end. It's the perfect size to send a raft through so we had to give it a try. |
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| Just east of town, you can take Mazourka Canyon Road to Kearsarge, an old train depot on the Owens River. Nowadays, there is absolutely nothing where the train depot used to be. It is however, the beginning of a long, deep canyon that goes all the way up into the Inyo Forest. I was able to park next to a large ore hopper at the entrance to the canyon for a nice photo op. | With a high clearance vehicle, this road at the beginning of the canyon will take you to some nice views of the Owens Valley & the Eastern Sierras. With a 4x4, you can take this road even further to what I believe are some good sized mines. I've yet to explore this area too much. | There was a lot of this kinda stuff in the area. |
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| As far as I've seen, this is about as far back as any tunnel goes in this canyon. Although, this is the ONLY tunnel I've been into in this canyon & I'm positive that there are more, larger ones. Next summer should prove to be good one for finding new spots in this area. | When I first saw this up on a hillside, I thought for sure it was a grave site. Turns out it's just a mining claim marker. Which makes since because this whole area looked mined out & there were a couple collapsed tunnels on the other side of this hill. | |
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UPDATE!! - June/7th and 8th/2003 |
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| From left to right: Scotty fanageling with his tangled rats nest of a line, Eric pullin in large trout, Jeremy trying his damndest in a really good spot. This is the weir on Independence Creek, our camping & fishing spot for the weekend. | Just about 5 minutes south of Independence is the old Manzanar "Relocation" Camp. Across the highway from that is a dirt road leading to some really great hidden fishing spots. This large pond collects where Shepard Creek meets the California Aqueduct. | The Shepard Creek "sandtrap". Out in the middle of the desert, this place actually has some nice shade to enjoy the day under. I saw a trout in the water here that was about 3 feet long...we didn't catch a thing here though. |
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| Back at camp at the weir. We'll be back ... as soon as the cubic flow rate is down in the creek. It was just too high & fast this weekend. Also probably a bit too cold from it being fresh snow melt. |
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UPDATE!! - July/26th and 27th/2003 |
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| Ah yes, another memorable weekend at the Lower Grays Meadow campground in Independence, California. On this particular trip I experienced a CLASSIC story of "the big one that got away"! It's a long story so ask me about it sometime. All I can say here is that it invloves me, a 2.5' long Rainbow Trout, & me again - wrestling the fish & the pole in the middle of the pond in about 10' of water! Wish I had photos of that one. We still caught our limit by that time though so everything was great as usual in the Owens Valley this weekend. | ||
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| A view of our campsite - right on Independence Creek. | You can find good fishing right here... | ...here... |
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| ...or here... | ...or even here. | Another view of the campsite. This time you get to see the table. |
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| This time you get to see Eric walking by the table. He's not holding a beer at 8:00am is he? | Ashley posing in front of Independence Peak. | Eric reelin them in down on the grassy banks. |
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| He picked a good spot so I just walk right on by. | A view of the Alabama Hills & Owens Valley from the campground. | Desert scenery on the way home. |
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| Sunset in the Mojave. | Of course, I caught twice as many as anybody else this weekend... Like I always say....we'll be back... |
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| No photos Yet. I can tell you that the weather was great, the fishing was unbelievable & we even had some newcomers to enjoy it with us. Also got a nice trip to the Reward mine in... | ||
Reward Mine
| Scroll down to see the original writeup.....click here to view the update | ||
| Some of my most favorite expanses of country in California is the Sierra Nevada & Inyo Mountains. Before I ever even got into mine exploring, I had been coming up here for decades; just enjoying the good fishing & great scenery. Come to find out however, much to my delight, there is also tons of great mine/ghost town exploring to be had around here. Now that has to make for some of the funnest weekends one could possibly have in this great state; fishing the gurgling creeks of the Sierras by day & exploring HUGE mines by night!! YEAH baby! We explored the Reward mine on the same weekend of our fishing trip to Independence Creek; mentioned in the report above. There is even some good fishing by this mine. Gotta love it. | ||
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| Catching the sunset from the entrance of the Reward mine. | Time to go in so we just drive right on through. Youcan see the hood of the Explorer in the foreground. This "road" goes in about 2000 feet into the mountian... | ...at which point we got out of the car & explored a few thousand more feet on our own 2 feet. |
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| The first set of ladders we come across go up about 30 feet then become very corroded. Had to move on. | Another set of ladders, all leading up to the level above us, went up & were very corroded as well. Only found 1 set of ladders in this entire lower level that were solid enough to climb. I kept forgetting that I was the only one with a head-lamp though so we couldn't climb any of them. | Come on up Jeremy, you don't need a flashlight! He chickened out & couldn't chimney up this small shaft so I went ahead without him & lucky for him too...at the top of this shaft I thought I was in a whole new level in the mine but it turns out you could catch a side adit in the main tunnel & get to this area without the climb. |
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| If you walk down that side adit for a bit you come across this large haulage shaft that reaches up a long ways & into darkness. The angle is about 45 degrees. | Keep going past that haulage shaft & the side adit will end at this small access shaft which was only big enough to place a ladder in. You can see the angle of the shaft & ladder in this photo - about 60 degrees. | That ladder went up & down a long ways. This shot is looking down. |
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| Coming out of that side adit & nearing the main drive-in tunnel. This was yet another ladder that gave obvious acces to the upper levels but we didn't try it. | "Reward Man"! |
Reward Man in the limelight. |
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| No photos yet, we only got a couple anyway. We didn't drive in this time but we did explore what I'm guessing was the entire first level. Time to move on to the other levels next time! | ||
Hauser Geode Beds
| The Hauser Geode Beds are out by Blythe, CA off the 10 Freeway. To get there you exit on Wiley Well Road, next to the State Prison. If you like rock-hounding, mine exploring, lost treasure hunting and/or beautiful desert scenery....this is a great place to visit. There are 2 campgrounds on Wiley Well Rd but I strongly suggest passing those up & finding your own primitive campsite. I think I remember them costing $25 per night & the only running water they had there was heavily treated Fluoride water, pumped by yourself from a well. Fluoride water is great for fighting cavities but if you want drinking water for an entire weekend, you'll have to bring your own. Which basically renders those campgrounds useless. You can camp anywhere in the area here, just as long as your not more than a couple hundred feet from the road. I suggest hunting for a very small sign on the right side of Wiley Well Road which indicates a path to "Ashley Flats". That's probably some of the best & most secluded camping in the area. The mines in the area are off of The Bradshaw Trail. | ||
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| The end of the road to the Hauser Geode Beds. There are trails going all over the place from here and they all seem to lead to good rockhounding spots. | High up on a ridge near the Geode Beds. Good view from here. | The same ridge looking north toward the Orocopia Mountains. |
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| Lots of Ocotillo on the way to the Geode Beds. | Here the road is going through Ashley Flats. It's FLAT here & the ground is all volcanic ash. | One of the many wash crossings on the way to the Geode Beds. Luckily none of them required 4 wheel drive. |
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| This is the turn-off to get to the Opal Hill Mine. We haven't seen that place yet. | On location at one of the mines along the Bradshaw Trail. This was the only one I was able to check out on this trip due to a dead battery - long story. The main adit was in front of my car about 75 yards. | The main adit. It looked very unstable inside & the tunnel didn't look like it went very far so I backed out. You can't tell from the photo but just above me at this point, there was a vertical shaft that was half-way filled up with fallen debris. It looked like it could go at any time. |
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| The hillside above the main adit was all dug out, connecting to the tunnel below & was kept stable by wooden supports. | This shaft connected to the adit as well. It might actually make for interesting rappel. | Yet another shaft that looked like it connected with the main adit. This mine was mostly vertical shafts, connecting to unknown levels of the mine. I'm going to have to come back to this area again & finish up what I started... |
Silver Lake Talc Mines
| The almost non-existant ghost town
of Silver Lake is about 8 miles north of Baker, CA on Highway
127. The only thing left of this townsite is a few building foundations
and a small fenced in cemetery. Neither of which I have pictures
of. Silver Lake was situated right on the old Tidewater & Tonopah
Railroad; a major railroad a century ago which serviced a lot
of different mines from Soda Lake, thru Death Valley & on to
Nevada. Silver Lake was somewhere in
the middle. The actual mine site of Silver Lake, a rather
large one by the way, was about 3 miles north-east of the town
up in the Silurian Hills. When we made the trip up to the Silver
Lake Mines in January of 2003, there was a massive desert construction
project in the area which was burying a large pipe of some kind
all the way through the desert towards Vegas. The construction
made it completely impossible to continue on the road to the
mines
so
when we arrived
at the area at around midnight, we could not find an alternate
road for the life of us. We just knew that if it were daytime,
we not only would probably be able to SEE the mines, but we would
surely be able to find a side road that by-passed the construction.
Unfortunately it being midnight, it was obviously not day time
& very dark out so we spontaneously decided to up & go
to Las Vegas! Hey, we were only 90 miles from Las Vegas already....why
not?! While coming back from LV the next day however, I looked at all the sleeping faces in my car & decided to let them sleep in peace while I go search for a way to the mines again! Just as long as I made it to the mine site before they woke up, everything would be OK. Otherwise, I'm sure they would have yelled & beaten me for waking them up the rest of the way to the mines. To my discomfort, I noticed that my good buddy, the one who likes to sleep the most, was starting to wake up by the time I got halfway to the mines. I did not dare look at him & invite a critique of the situation! All of a sudden he spoke up, "Are we going back to the mines?" "YUP" I said. "Awesome.", he replied!! Great! Now it was only a matter of time & it was looking like I wouldn't have to make this adventure alone... |
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| "This isn't really what I had in mind for this trip, guys!" | I was right, you could easily see the large mining operation up on the hillside by the time you got to the construction area. After easily by-passing that, this large ore-hopper was visible at the base of the Silurian Hills. | So I had to jump into it for a photo op. |
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| Just above where we parked, this large glory hole gave treacherous access to several entrances to what looked like the same tunnel. After looking at this feature for a while it became apparent that this probably was never a glory hole at all...it looks to me like a massive cave-in that revealed the network of underground tunnels. | Just on the other side of that ore hopper, this shaft went straight down for about 60 feet. The ladder that I'm standing on wouldn't even be stable enough for a kitten to climb down. It's been out in the open & exposed to the desert environment for the last hundred or so years so I'm surprised it's even still there. | Another entrance into the Silver Lake Mines. Unfortunately, this one was all caved in. No access here... |
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| Finally, an entrance. This was the only tunnel in the area that we saw that was not caved in. There wasn't a single tailing pile around here either so it was very hard to find. We were actually about to leave, disappointed that we hadn't found much when we almost walked right past this tunnel. | Silver lake mine was an interesting one. Not just a long tunnel that went straight back. Here was a side room with braces all over the place and a platform in the middle of the room that led to another small tunnel. | A dead-end at the end of the tunnel. Notice the ore cart tracks on the floor, they lead straight into another cave-in. I guess you can't expect a talc mine to be very stable. |
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| Another reason why this mine is an interesting one. I think I'm climbing up into some kind of ore-hopping station that shot off from the main tunnel. To tell you the truth, I don't even remember this part of the mine! I had to cross-reference with the clothes I am wearing in the pic just to verify that this is inside the Silver Lake! | Looking down into an incline shaft. It is an easy slope to climb down but it ends within a few yards of it's start. | For this shot I got to crawl up into a stope that looked like it had been used for sleeping quarters. But that couldn't have been it's use; I sure as hell wouldn't sleep in a mine after working all day in it. |
Cetopa, CA - Death valley NP
| This was my very first trip up into DVNP and it was all that I imagined it could be! We camped out at the Midnight Mine the first night & woke up to a great view of the Midnight & its furnicular, the canyon we were in, the talc mine across the valley & the vastness of DV in the far background. This place is great. There are about 6 different mines in this general area, all of which have multiple entrances & many underground workings to explore. I was in mine-exploring heaven by about 7am the first morning! The Midnight, #2, #3, & Peace Dove mines are all within walking distance of each other & from certain vantage points in the valley, you can snap a good photo with all of them in the picture. You know how I said we camped out at the Midnight Mine the first night? Well somehow, while driving up to it at 1am the night before, I missed a BLM marker that identifies the spot as being in a Wilderness Area (no motorized vehicular travel of any kind whatsoever, may God have mercy on your soul if the rangers find you). The Midnight actually sits just inside this boundary so we promptly moved our camp to the base of the tailings pile at #2 which is just outside of the boundary. It was a much better campsite anyway! Although, come to find out later on, that marker is falsely placed & no existing road can be added into any Wilderness Area anywhere - so camping at the Midnight is just fine.The great thing about this place is that, most likely, you won't see another soul the entire time you are there. You can see the main road in the distance & we saw a total of 3 cars drive through the entire weekend. None of them dared come up the dirt road that leads to the mines. It wasn't a slow weekend either; only a few miles away, a small town was pretty much packed with sight-seers but none of them made their way towards the Midnight area. We explored the canyons & the mines for 2 days straight & I have yet to explore everything. Someday soon I'll come back & show the rest of the mine explorers this place. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Deep inside the Midnight. This was the first real sign of life in the mine, all around us here are workings & boarded up areas that used to house a small utility shack & a large winch room that brought ore up from the lower levels. | A very nice accent piece was inside the utility room. | Here I am making my way down, down, down into the bowels of the mountain. That winch room I was talking about is directly behind the picture taker here & the ore carts it hauled up came up through the open space that is to the left of me. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Here is the utility room itself. You can see shelving on the far right & left in the picture which were basically all cleaned out. I don't know what I was doing on the ground, maybe scrounging through all the hundred year old trash that was around. | This is documentation of a ridiculous little episode I had to go through in the Midnight.....I was up on a platform looking down an ore shoot into an inaccessible room when I bumped my glasses against a low beam, one of the lenses popped out & fell about 15 feet down an ore shoot into this inaccessible room! So here I am at the bottom of this ore shoot performing surgery on my glasses. Half blind. Pitch black around me. In a precarious unstable ore shoot! luvin it. | This is the main incline shaft at the #2 Mine. It's the only way into the main part of the mine so we climbed these ladders about 250 down into the lower tunnels. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| A bit blurry but this is actually where the main tunnel in the Midnight exits the other side of the mountain. In the far background that's me walking out onto an old track tressle that spanned a large wash. | A good view of the #3 mine on the other side of the wash. | This is one of the most breath taking views I've ever seen while mine exploring! You can see the #3 mine in the background.....the tracks that lead to the right go straight into the Midnight tunnel. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Another shot of those tracks heading out over the wash. | Ashley sitting on a bench in front of the #3 mine headframe. | This is the view that Ashley had while sitting on that bench. Beautiful weather in DV that weekend, eh?! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| An ore hopper in front of the #3 mine. You can still see that tressle in the background. | The upper "entrance" to the #3 mine. I'm crouching in here looking at a large stope room that dropped dangerously out of site into the mountain. | Hard physical evidence of some good clean fun going on. She's covered from head to toe in powdery mine dirt. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Inside the remains of a cabin, looking up at the tailing pile from the Midnight. | That same cabin from the outside. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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