A couple of weeks ago me and my husband explored a mining area. Since the old road is invisible from the main road, we hadn’t ever thought to hike in this area before. We saw it from high up across the valley as a road, figured there were mines up there and decided to take a look-see. It’s a nice semi steep road that switch-backs up the hillside and makes little stops along the way at various mines. I thought there would be one or two mines, but we found at least 4 and didn’t make it all the way to the top. Due to a time restraint, we had to turn back when we were just below what looked to be an interesting mine complete with remnants of it’s working days. When we have more time, we’re going to have to go back.
None of the mines were blocked up, but we only went a few steps inside. They very quickly plunged into inky blackness that I wasn’t too interested in exploring. From some of them there was a blissfully cool breeze coming from them that made them a nice spot to stop and cool off for a minute. One of them appeared to have been a long abandoned homeless person’s home complete with overhead lighting, a door, and a litter of plastic garbage.
While I don’t condone vandalism, Craig from ’84 did a seriously impressive job with his bulldozer carving. There was a lot of evidence of the past on this hillside. Looking down the hillside littered with old mining debris, you can also see just how far we hiked to get up there. You can just barely see the road cutting through the bottom of the valley.
I was impressed at how shoddy the joining of the big metal pipes were. They didn’t look like anyone has touched them since they were in use and yet there were so many holes and gaps and random pieces of wire and wood holding it together. I can’t imagine it was super effective at bringing ore down the hill, but maybe it was, I’m clearly not a miner.
It was also interesting to see rocks everywhere up high on the hillside with the ripple marks of water on them and imagine the whole area under water. Even seeing fossils of sea life around here, proof that this all was once under an inland sea in the late-cretaceous period, still make it hard to imagine this ultra dry place as watery.