There's a cow next to the road.
And he has a buddy right behind him. Black and brown.
So I'm hiking down this old mining road that you see right here. This is where I just came
from. I'm going downhill a little bit to an abandoned mine about a mile up the road here.
And I'm headed this way, and this is looking across the valley
at what are the White Mountains there in the distance. Some of those still have
some snow on them up there at the top. I don't know what's here if anything.
It could be really small or it could be something big. Probably isn't. It's probably
just a prospect, but I'm going to check it out nonetheless. And here's looking down the valley.
That's looking to the south. Still have some snow in the mountains. Those are
the Sierra Nevada Mountains there in the distance and they still have some snow.
So it looks like southern California is going to have some drinking water
this coming summer thanks to that snow.
But, yes, so here's the old road -- just an old mining road cutting across the hillside.
So here is some metal debris alongside the
road probably left over from the mine. It looks like metal hoops.
So making this big turn here in the road.
It wraps around here and then up there
it's going to wrap around to the left, and there should be a mine entrance.
You can see right there next to the road the berm that they
built. It's still standing after all these years,
so they took some care to make sure this road we're hiking on
remained viable back when the mine was in operation. So who knows what's down here!
There are some interesting rocks down there by that tree. So a lot of viewers asked me
the question (and it's a good question), "How did the miners know where to dig?
Were they just out walking these hills picking spots at random and digging a hole or what?"
Well, from what little I've learned over the last few years, miners would look for outcroppings
of rock that would contain the ore that they were looking for whether it was gold, silver,
copper, talc, or whatever. And right there across the ravine you can see those gray rocks
to the left of that tree. That's an outcropping of some kind of rock. I'm not sure what that is,
but that's what they would look for. That would be an ideal spot to punch a tunnel right below that
tree right there in the crevice of the ravine, and that's what they would do. Of course, they would
sample the rocks first to make sure they contained the ore that they were looking for. if it did
then, yes, they would dig a tunnel there or, if it was appropriate, a vertical or inclined shaft.
So that's how they did it -- look for outcroppings. I'm sure some
miners just went out and dug holes here and there at random on these hillsides.
Those are usually little prospect pits that we see that are marked on the topographic maps.
The maps do make a distinction between the two -- between mines and prospects. But for the most
part, I think they looked for outcroppings. I also heard if they found gold in a stream,
they would hike the stream and go upstream to try and find the source of where the gold
might be coming from. So that's how they sometimes located gold mines if they found gold nuggets when
they were panning in a stream. They'd head upstream and look for a quartz outcropping
because quartz is where the gold is. So that's what I've learned over the last few years.
Up there it looks like there's a small waste rock pile, but the road comes down here and the topo
map shows the adit at the end of the road and not up there. I'm not sure what's going on here.
I see some debris up here -- some metal
debris. There's another berm right there.
A small waste rock pile right here. Here's the tunnel.
But it looks like it's eroded shut. Look at that!
Yes, it's eroded shut.
I probably could dig that out but I'm not going to do that. There are
some big timbers here outside what was the portal as well as some metal, so I
don't know. I'm standing on the waste rock pile which isn't that big, but it's not small either.
There are
some more timbers down there and some stone work. I don't know. It must have been a little mine.
Let's go check out that upper pile right up there at the top of the hill. That might be another way
in. Okay, the eroded mine portal was right down there where we just were, so I hiked up here
to this other waste rock pile. I'm directly in line with what would be the tunnel down below,
and it would have come in to here. This looks like
maybe its just a prospect pit or maybe this was a shaft that went down to the tunnel down below.
It's a pretty big pit. There are some wooden timbers right there, and
the main part of the waste rock pile is this light tan colored rock.
So I'm assuming they dug the tunnel first because that's what's on the topo map. The tunnel is down
there and then somebody at a later date -- after the map was made -- came up here and tried to
connect up with the tunnel or just dug a shaft here -- a pit -- trying to mine the same ore.
Probably gold I'm thinking, and that's as far as they got because this this pit is not marked
on the topo maps. Usually prospects like this are marked if they were present when the map was made.
So we have to make our way back over that way to the old road
and get out of here. And somewhere up above me there's a jet. Can you hear that?
Pretty spectacular scenery! It's too bad that mine was a bust, but that was definitely eroded shut.
When you have a portal like that in a ravine like that one was with all this loose dirt (this soil
that I'm walking on is really loose and it's like sand), every rainstorm that
dirt just falls down over that portal and seals it up. That is what happened there.
There's a view to the right of a big rock outcropping.
And the road should be up here somewhere.
And here is the road
right here in front of me!
That saved a few steps by cutting across the hillside.
It's about just under a mile from where I parked the car down to that portal on this old road,
so it's not too bad. It's a nice little hike on a nice, bright, sunny day like today.
Here's one last view looking around
at the Sierra Nevada Mountains.