Baldora Mine Hunt
What a hike this was…
Starting at East Fork and taking the Heaton Flats trail up to Heaton Saddle, we then cut east at the saddle and followed an old trail to get to our destination. Withing 50′ of taking this trail from the saddle, you quickly realize what you’re in store for. Brush, overgrowth, and yucca. But it’s all negotiable if you don’t mind getting pricked along the way.
There are some spots along the trail that are washed out and it’s a scramble across. The video below is the first of three such areas. This was probably the worst of it since the dropoff is a little steeper and more menacing than the others.
Past this, you can follow the old remnants of the trail as it snakes along the mountain. This trail is pretty flat and there’s hardly any gain along the way. We followed this trail until we got to the creek where a downhill scramble is required.
That video is from the creek bed looking at back at the trail. It’s not as bad as it looks.
We followed the creek bed for a good ways, doing some bouldering and rock hopping along the way.
We then cut north and found some old remnants of car which that was pretty rusted over. It also had wooden spokes! So that’s gotta be pretty old.
We continued along this path just north of the creek. The canyon here starts to narrow a bit, so you’re pretty much forced to do some bushwhacking and route finding. After path finding for about a mile, we finally got to an old shack. This was a pretty cool place to have lunch and just check out.
After having lunch here, we continued up the creek a little ways just to explore a little more and hopefully come across another mine. We did find some other machinery there. But I was more preoccupied taking pictures of the creek.
This was pretty much the end of the exploration. We did go up about 200′ along the mountain and discussed an alternate loop route involving Iron, Baldy, and Eagle mine. But that’s for another hike and discussion.
The way back was the same as the way there. Yucca is always annoying, but there are ways around it.
Check out my pictures from the day here.
Meetup Description here.
Read Ze’s report here.
Stats:
Mileage: 14 miles
Gain: ~5200′
| # | Latitude | Longitude | Elevation | Distance | Time | Avg Speed |
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1 | N 34° 14' 13.58" | W 117° 45' 54.83" | 620 m | 0.000 mi | 0s | - |
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2 | N 34° 14' 34.57" | W 117° 45' 24.39" | 720 m | 1.004 mi | 29m 10s | 2.06 mph |
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3 | N 34° 14' 38.72" | W 117° 44' 46.07" | 992 m | 0.999 mi | 25m 50s | 2.32 mph |
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4 | N 34° 15' 05.66" | W 117° 44' 19.03" | 1203 m | 1.004 mi | 24m 50s | 2.42 mph |
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5 | N 34° 15' 23.69" | W 117° 43' 24.17" | 1437 m | 1.000 mi | 27m 41s | 2.17 mph |
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6 | N 34° 15' 49.16" | W 117° 42' 56.58" | 1317 m | 1.001 mi | 52m 40s | 1.14 mph |
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7 | N 34° 16' 09.28" | W 117° 42' 18.57" | 1293 m | 0.997 mi | 35m 41s | 1.68 mph |
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8 | N 34° 16' 30.58" | W 117° 42' 08.55" | 1445 m | 0.998 mi | 41m 00s | 1.46 mph |
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9 | N 34° 16' 28.89" | W 117° 42' 09.55" | 1427 m | 0.998 mi | 58m 10s | 1.03 mph |
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10 | N 34° 15' 56.03" | W 117° 42' 30.58" | 1268 m | 1.005 mi | 45m 30s | 1.33 mph |
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11 | N 34° 15' 39.89" | W 117° 43' 13.78" | 1368 m | 0.997 mi | 32m 40s | 1.83 mph |
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12 | N 34° 15' 12.16" | W 117° 43' 49.98" | 1298 m | 1.004 mi | 40m 50s | 1.48 mph |
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13 | N 34° 14' 54.66" | W 117° 44' 41.58" | 1162 m | 0.996 mi | 20m 00s | 2.99 mph |
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14 | N 34° 14' 36.59" | W 117° 45' 01.11" | 880 m | 1.000 mi | 22m 20s | 2.69 mph |
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15 | N 34° 14' 29.65" | W 117° 45' 40.94" | 621 m | 1.003 mi | 20m 20s | 2.96 mph |
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16 | N 34° 14' 13.54" | W 117° 45' 54.92" | 625 m | 0.511 mi | 9m 28s | 3.24 mph |
| Summary | 5974 ft | 14.515 mi | 8h 06m 10s | 1.79 mph | |||
This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Trip Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Zé August 31st, 2009 at 6:09 am
Nice story Robert. I believe those private property holdings prevent hiking up Coldwater Canyon nowadays. If you buy them, it would be nice if you let us hike through them
The railways was definitely gone; I think the shaft was sealed but also we should have checked higher up; I don’t think I reached the upper end of the railway.
Did you ever happen to go to the Eagle and Gold Dollar mines?