Another adventure up the East Fork with some old trail exploration and a taste of Fish Fork.

Final Stats:

16 miles, 2500 ft

Photos are geo-tagged
Click for more stats & gps files

The Fish Fork of the San Gabriel river is known to be pretty wild. Steep canyon walls and waterfalls make it an epic canyoneering trip, as evidenced by Zach and Taco just a few weeks ago. Without technical equipment, one can only check out the lower end for perhaps 1.5 miles and even less at the upper end that is accessible via Pine Mtn ridge to Upper Fish Fork campground.

Ryan (Taco) and Zach were heading back to retrieve some equipment they had to leave, and Patrick, Johanna, and myself joined along to help…well at least to give moral support. I wasn’t sure how long of a day I was up for and it was hard to predict how long it would take, especially the ~ 1.5 miles up Fish Fork to find their gear.

We left ~ 6:30 am and made good time, arriving at Iron Fork in ~ 2:40. Without thinking, I was pulling myself up the steep beginning of Ross’s SE ridge. I hadn’t thought about it, but have always wanted to check it out for a potential ascent of Baden-Powell from the south, so up I went. This beginning part was pretty nice, with a bit of scrambling and steep dropoffs to the east.

I stayed on the top of the ridge to avoid the brush to the west, but as you can see there wasn’t much room for error. I continued up until I had gained about 500 ft, when I came to a junction with an old trail that you can sometimes find on topo maps. Naturally, I decided to check that out.

I’d say the trail wasn’t in bad shape in general, about half in the clear and easily passable and the other half not so much. I was initial wearing short sleeves so I began to strip to put on pants and long sleeve shirt when I noticed the others had spotted me, and probably wondering what in the world I was doing. I pointed in the generally direction of Fish Fork hoping my excellent non-verbal communication skills would get across the idea that I would meet them ahead.

On I went, barreling straight through some brush, crawling underneath the brush in a few spots, and climbing over it in others. I kind of enjoyed it to be honest.

Overall I was making okay time, moving between fast and slow a bunch. After maybe 0.6 miles, I came upon a brush filled gully I had to cross, and at the same time the others below were shouting out to try to come down. I indicated I would (was almost the end of the trail anyways), but I had to get across this gully first.

It was terrible, covered in everything. I would have dealt with the brush fine if it was for poison oak being everywhere. I wasn’t sure how I could avoid it. I attempted some succession of terrible maneuvers attempting to climb on top of the brush, then holding myself up only by my arms, and other ridiculous moves. Once I did collapse near / on some poison oak, but hopefully it didn’t get on me bad.

Finally I made it out, and I was toast! I was breathing so hard. A nice sort of interval training, I guess. I kept going and started looking for a way down, but nothing looked great. I started descending and traversing, while getting myself into a few non-optimal spots. Finally I did make it down where Ryan and Zach were lopping off – yup, more poison oak!

We continued up the stream a short bit to Fish Fork campground. The water in this small section was really cold, and I was hoping it would not be like that up Fish Fork since it would be hard to stay out of the water there.

I needed a short break at the campground while Ryan, Zach, and Patrick departed. Johanna was planning on not going further and hanging out here for a while. While I was quite content to just stay at the campground, I decided I should at least check out a little bit of Fish Fork, so I headed up.

At first I tried to look for any spots to stay out of the water, but that seemed more hassle than it was worth. Plus, there was no poison oak in the stream and the temperature was quite nice. It was quite enjoyable actually. I kept going up, then checked to see what I did – 0.5 miles in 50 minutes, yikes! According to Jerry Schad’s description of the canyon, it would be 1.5 miles until a small 10-12 ft waterfall would create an impasse, which is located 0.2 miles below the main falls. Zach and Ryan’s gear was probably located between these two falls, so they had another 3 hrs ahead of them. I knew there’s no way I would be able to catch up or do anything, so I turned back.

At the campground there was some random sleeping bag, so I rolled that out and took a nice nap for a bit. Then Ryan’s voice came through the radio and mentioned that they were still a bit more away from the gear – over 3 hours since departing up Fish Fork. This meant it was going to take them over 4 hours to get back down…Patrick had just turned around but it was going to take him probably 3 hours to get down. We packed up some of their things they left and ‘hid’ it in a spot they would find (per a note we left). Then we headed back.

The way back was pretty nice, good weather mixed with heading in and out of the water, it was quite good. Resting at the bridge, I kept hearing some squeaking and then we found bats were hanging out in one of the cracks in the bridge!

Ryan and Taco did get their gear, getting back ~ 11 pm. I’m sure their TR will be quite interesting!

Driving with Taco

A modified way to Stanley-Miller, and this time we found the mine.

Final Stats:

18 miles, 7500 ft

Click for more stats & gps files

Last August, a bunch of us made the trek up the East Fork to Iron Fork in search of the elusive Stanley-Miller mine. The old “trail” that we followed up was pretty much a disastor waiting to happen, and while we found the cabin ruins and some artifacts, our delusional minds led us chasing ghosts as the actual mine location was nowhere near where we thought we saw it was.

Of course, I knew I had to go back. Now was the time.

That crappy way up was so bad that I actually didn’t mine the idea of hiking up Iron and descending the NW ridge to Stanley-Miller. And who could resist a new cross-country exploration? Well I guess most could resist, as only two others opted for this last-minute proposal. And Mike only had time to summit Iron and turn around, so it was just Winston and I. Winston has previously hiked some brutal ones with me, including the last Stanley-Miller trek and the real (eastern) Yuciapa ridge, so I knew he’d be fine with whatever we had to encounter.

We took about 3.5 hrs to ascent up Iron, and it went by quickly as Mike and I were discussing science & religion. After a nice rest, we began the cross-country descent. First we descending the summit south as usual, and after about 5 minutes we hit the large buckthorn brush patch. Here we wanted to veer west…luckily the south side of the brush was trampled down and made it easy to cross.

The first part of the western ridge was relatively gentle and not too steep. There was a nice area for camping about 1/4 mile away from the south ridge. After that, the ridge got nice a rugged with lots of rock outcroppings which we scrambled over and on the sides of.

After this section we continued west. There seemed to be a decent use trail up to this point…At about 7200′, the west ridge splits into SW and NW components, both of which have been hiked up before, with the SW likely more popular due to the shorter approach. We began our descent down the NW ridge.

I thought the ridge was nice and rugged, but not too bad. Steep with lots of bouldering here and there and avoiding some brush, but not enough to really slow us down. We were making good progress, taking a little over and hour to descend the first 2000′.

Near 6000′ there are couple of navigational issues along with the terrain changing into classic “brushland”. The ridge has turned more northernly and splits into 2 spurs and you must veer off onto the NW spur although the N spur seems like the natural way to go. Soon after, at 5800′, you must veer W to maintain the proper descent. At this point, the brush quickly thickened. It was somewhat annoying but not really that bad, as we could usually find an opening or two to continue switchbacking down.

We also were about 10′ away from this guy. He was not happy

watch out for the rattlers from Zé Apelido on Vimeo.

At about 5200′ there is a benchmark. This signals another route change; we had to turn from heading W to again heading NW. Now we were heading down the ridge that eventually ends up right by the cabin ruins 1000′ below. At 4800′ we crossed a huge pipe, maybe 8″ in diameter. Hmm, I wonder what that could be leading to…The pipe headed more westerly than our NW direction. It’s path seemed covered in brush so we continued our descent NW while knowing eventually we would have to head south to meet up with this pipe (and hopefully the mine) again.

Descending to the elevation 4000′, we traversed south in search of the mine. It took us a bit of time, as initially we travsered about 100 yds and did not see anything so we sat down and studied the map and how far the mine should be. We decided it must be further south (and obviously the pipe was too). I climbed backed up a few 100 ft while Winston traversed across, and when I found the pipe Winston found the pipe, and a bunch of ruins!

There was a bunch of terraced platforms with equipment. Lots of old machinery.

But the mine wasn’t here. We looked around a bit further, and finally found the mine just south of the machinery. Finally!

After passing the ore cart near the entrance, the mine splits into two. You can see the railway on the ground that goes out and over to the machinery.

The two shafts continue back and eventually connect back up into a loop. There are various small spurs, one or two with vertical or “oblique” shafts.

Really cool stuff. This mine was damper than the others – you could see water droplets forming on the ceiling, and the air was misty, although I’m not sure if that was from moisture or also rock debris.

After checking out the mine, we were ready to get off the mountain. We descended down, this time generally following the gully south of the gully we had ascended last time. It was a relatively better, but that’s not saying much. It was better in that there were no “if this rock breaks I’m going to be a crash test dummy” moves, so yeah…Ascent to Stanley-Miller mine is just a pain no matter what.

Getting near the Narrows, I was hoping the water level wouldn’t be too high to cause that much of a problem. My “backup” plan was to follow the old “Wetwater” trail. Then I saw it – literally carved out of a cliff, and preferred to take our chances in the water.

We had about 6 crossings in the Narrows section, a few of which got up to our waists. The current was decently strong in some spots, but it was negotiable. Here’s one pic I got of a shallower crossing:

After reaching the bridge, we were homefree. What an adventure. This hike had a bunch of great things, peak-bagging, cross country travel, rock bouldering, mine exploration, and water crossings. And not many flies.

Okay these mines really are quite inaccessible.

Final Stats:

17 miles, 8000 ft

Click for more stats & gps files

All I gotta say is, mine hikes are really exhausting. Our attempts to reach all the mines around Iron mountain have become increasingly more difficult, to the point that I thought I would reach the final 2 yesterday, and left only reaching one.

The Eagle and Gold Dollar mines are perched high up on the south side of the San Antonio ridge, with the Gold Dollar 1000 ft higher than the Eagle. The lure of these mines came to me when I read the late Hugh Blanchards website about mines (his website is seemingly down now). There he wrote about (cached) the most inaccessible mines, and indicated these two being the most inaccessible of all in the area. Well some that like a challenge will jump at try to reach things that are seemingly hard to access.

To further fuel the fire, I had read John Robinson’s books on San Gabriel mountain history and his small Mines of the San Gabriels. The allure he brought to the history of the gold miners of the East Fork made the potential explorations even more appealing. In speaking about Coldwater Canyon, Robinson talked about

Far above the head of Coldwater Canyon, just under the jagged ridge that connects Iron Mountain with Old Baldy, were the loftiest and most inaccessible gold mines of all – the Gold Dollar and Eagle…how this heavy machinery was hoisted so far up the mountainside defies imagination.

He also mentions the founder of all the mines of Coldwater Canyon (including the Baldora), Charlie Smith, had a spectacular death by having an avalanche slam down on him while in his cabin at the Eagle mine. What would be left?

So we set out at 6:30 with 13 people. Not all would make it all the way, but all would at least visit the Widco / Baldora mine ruins, a big and pleasing hike alone. After hiking the Heaton Flat trail to Coldwater saddle, we descended along the old and partially washed out trail down to Coldwater canyon. Over a year since my last visit, some one has been down here trimming the yuccas, which made the trek a bit easier. The trail is somewhat brushy, but not really that bad.

I went down swiftly to do some “extra” exploration while waiting for the others to get down. Speaking of abandoned things, there once was a trail that climbed up to Big Horn ridge from Coldwater canyon. I found a trace of the old trail on a USGS historical map, so I decided to go check it out. This took some scrambling initially, but in short I do believe I found traces of the trail.

I could only follow in some spots and wanted to continue on to the other side of the ridge (where previous photos indicate a trail), but sadly I did not have the time. However, I am intrigued at the possibility that a lot of this trail could be followed.

Heading back down, I met up with the rest of the group and we headed up Dry Gulch to the Widco and Baldora ruins. We weren’t making great time, and worse yet, there were bugs everywhere! These guys would not leave us alone for the rest of our time in this canyon.

The worse of the hike came during our ascent of the east side of Dry Gulch up to the south ridge I’ll call Gold Dollar ridge. It is extremely steep with almost too soft ground. The climb took more work than normal to balance oneself. Oh and the freaking flies. Flies everywhere. Flies in your face, in your nose, in your eyes, and in your mouth (at least 3 times for me). This just took up more energy. A simple 1000 ft climb seemingly took forever. Of the 13, only 6 decided to not turn around and make it up to the ridgetop. Where there were more flies, damn them!

At this point I knew my initial idea of seeing both mines AND traversing SA ridge to Iron would not happen, but I thought maybe we could still visit both mines. We starting heading north up the ridge but soon ran into a lot of rocky sections, that took up even more time. I could see the group was not feeling the idea of continuing up further, so we stopped and took a short lunch break. I don’t have any good photos of the obstacles ahead of us, but suffice to say it probably would have been easier going down this ridge than up.

Looking at the time, it was already 1 or so, and I felt defeated, thinking that we wouldn’t even have time to visit Eagle mine and we would come away empty handed. But as we started heading back down the ridge, I looked down the SE gully and just decided to go down it, aiming directly for Eagle mine. The terrain seemed pretty good and so a few others followed. And I was really glad we did.

We quickly fell upon the ruins of the Eagle mine. Some of highlights include this massive stamp mill

A lot of other artifacts around the area. Down below, some old cabin ruins (perhaps washed down from the avalanche?). Attached to the mill were a few metal cables going uphill. I climbed up following these to some other machinery. To my left, I noticed some depression in the slope and found the opening to the actual mine!

The shaft started horizontally then turned vertically perhaps 50 ft in:

Very cool stuff. Some shovels and old hammers inside too. After this, we took a long 4 hrs to get back to the parking lot. While we didn’t get to Gold Dollar mine, reaching Eagle mine made it well worth the trek. The combination of ruins and mine shaft make Eagle mine the most interesting one to visit (although Stanley-Miller might match that). As for Gold Dollar, I feel pretty confident that I would rather hike up Iron and over Gunsight Notch to get to it than the way we went. What a day!

Shooting for a PR up Big Iron’s ‘trail’…

Final Stats:

14 miles, 7100 ft

Click for more stats

I knew if I did Iron ever again via the standard south route, it would be to try to see how quickly I could get up. Otherwise, I would prefer to take on more exploratory routes.

Well that day ended up being yesterday, partly because I knew a meetup group was heading up there, and I was able to get a few hiking buddies to go with me who wanted to try the same thing. The day was reasonable in temperature as it ended up being around 50-60 degrees the whole way up, so I was able to pare down to a reasonable 5 liters of water for the hike.

My general goal was to get under 3 hrs, but really just try to goal all out while ‘hiking’. So my stipulations were to 1) stay on the established trail and 2) not run. And I did have Rick Kent’s time in the back of my mind.

Steve, Fernando, Scott and I left the parking lot at 7:15 am. I maintained a brisk walking pace, and continued up to the first saddle non stop ~ 30 min later. Here we took a brief stop.

I really didn’t want to stop to long, so we continued on shortly after, switchbacking up and going across the undulated ridge that eventually hits Coldwater Saddle 4.4 miles in. This ridge was even more annoying this time only because I wanted to get done with it as quickly as possible to start the real pain up Iron’s south ridge.

We got to the saddle in 1hr20min, and stopped for a minute. Scott wasn’t feeling well and decided to rest there; us 3 left kept going. I didn’t look at the time again until the top; I knew I just wanted to push. I was feeling pretty good up to this point. Of course it gets really steep immediately after the saddle, but I was able to keep my legs chopping at a seemingly good pace.

Eventually I was just breathing really hard, perhaps for the last 2000′ or so. It all looked like this at that point!

Heading up Iron Mountain from Zé Apelido on Vimeo.

My legs were starting to feel it pretty bad. My right calf and a random ankle dorsiflexor were stiffening up almost begging to cramp, but they didn’t. I felt like I was slowing down a little. I met up with Dave G 500-1000 ft below the summit very briefly then continued up. I couldn’t wait to be done moving. At that point, I started to get a little extra push and was back at my pace. I finished off the last few hundred feet very hard and breathing VERY deeply. When I got to the summit I just dropped my bag and just stared at the ground for a second. Zach was there; he heard my breathing just before and was probably thinking “WTF is that?”.

I looked at my GPS and got Moving Time: 2:35 + Rest Time: 2 min = 2hr37 min. I was pleasantly surprised!

Fernando summited perhaps 10 min later, and Steve after that (included taking care of business along the way up). We hung around for a good while as the meetup group hikers made it up.

Zach and Dave G were planning on heading over to Baldy. While people were chatting I took a jaunt along SA ridge going down and over a few bumps. There was snow on the north side but it seemed mostly avoidable. I took some scout pictures and headed back up.

After some brownies, we headed back down.

Descending Iron Mountain from Zé Apelido on Vimeo.

Today, for the first time on an Iron hike, I’m not sore. For me, it’s time to retire the south ridge.

Final Stats:

15 miles, 4500 ft (my path)

To paraphrase,

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different result.”

East Fork to the Narrows & Stanley Miller Mine at EveryTrail

meetup link and other’s photos and comments

I think there was some insanity in this hike as well. What a hike.

This was part 3 out of 4 in the hiking series “Mines of Iron Mountain”. #1 was Allison Mine, and #2 was Baldora and Widco Mines. I expected this one to be harder than the first two, but even so it was a bit harder than I predicted.

We started off with 9 people hiking up the East Fork around other people heading up to the the bridge. The water level was lower than last time I was there in the spring, so the few crossings were easier and sped up our pace. We made it to the bridge in 2 hrs.

From there, we continued into the Narrows, a section that I don’t think anyone in the group had been to before. I really liked the area, with plenty of watering holes around smooth rock, nice areas to camp, and a little more isolation. Apparently there is a guy named Hobo Dave who resides back here.

So the plan was to get to Stanley-Miller Mine. I can’t say it was a well thought out plan. I studied a map beforehand as well as made gps coordinates and tracks around the area, and I read one Sierra Club trip report that hiked up the west ridge of Iron Mt and passed by Stanley Miller on the way.

If you study the USGS topo map, you’ll see a bunch of trails around the Narrows and Stanley-Miller. The one used in the trip report seemed to be the one ascending from Iron Fork straight up to the mine. The other trails I had heard were non-existent.

Well this certainly was a nonexistant trail to! In fact, I wonder how it could even be considered a trail. We started ascending up, passing up a bit of poison oak (mentioned in the Sierra club TR), and then went up the steep gully formed with lots of steep rock slabs. This was alright for some, but harder for others. One specific spot that had few decent handholds slowed the group down and had some turn around.

Once we got past that obstacle and continued up the rocks, it seemed the “trail path” was going straight into brush. So I decided to veer NE along the rock in hopes to eventually cut across south and avoid the brush. Well, rocks heading NE were even worse. As many of you know, the San Gabriels have some terrible, crumbly rock. Well there I am, climbing up this crap with a nice steep drop to my left on the side of freaking Iron Mt.

Of course I paid attention checking and testing all the holds before I would make a move, but it was unsettling when so many holds would give out. Even large slabs of rock would give out. At point I tested a rock and it came out so quickly I almost lost my balance.

At that point I said ‘screw this’ (actually I said some more colorful things) and cut across south to deal with the brush. I was in the area of the mine, but I couldn’t see anything. The gully was covered in brush. Rudy and I waited for the other 4 to meet up (Hugo, Tim, Winston, & Andy), and they saw on the other side of the gully the chimney from old pictures. We then also thought we saw a mine entrance, and I took a pic of it.

At that point it just seemed we would cut across through some brush and find everything. For some reason, it was harder than it seemed. The brush was annoying but we made it across. The we started ascending, but apparently we ascended to far, so after looking around we descended again, and finally found the cabin ruins along with other artifacts.

The cabin is basically right on top of a ridge along the trail that connects Stanley-Miller to Allison Mine. We did not see a mine right around it. We went over the picture we thought was a mine entrance, and determined based on the trees in the picture it would be higher up. Tired already, we went up a bit again and then I continued up determined to find this SOB. I went up 500 ft or so, but no luck.

At that point we had spent 3-4 hrs up there and were resigned to not seeing the actually mine entrance but happy we did find the mind ruins. We descending down slightly south of our path up, on the other side of the brush which had some loose dirt making for a quicker descent. We connected back up with the rock-slab filled gully near the bottom which took some strong friction/wedge moves to avoids sliding down.

Back at the river, I just dropped my stuff and walked right in. Cooling off never felt better after that hot, brush-filled and exhausting climb. After everyone came down, we headed back.

Along the way back we saw Hobo Dave’s hut. I went over hoping he would be home and explain where the mine entrance was, but no luck.

On the way back past a rock slide we heard some rocks falling, and looked up to see about 8 Bighorn sheep. My first time seeing them!

All in all, it was a great, frustrating, dangerous journey.

Post: Later on, Tim pointed out to me the picture in the LA Gold Mines site. When I looked at that link previously, I thought the picture was just detailing the inside of the mine so I didn’t pay attention carefully. What a moron I am!

The picture shows the location of the mine relative to the chimney and ruins. Apparently the mine is about 100 yds south of the chimney. This means while we were going up and down along the northern side of the ridge, the mine was actually south at the same elevation. Ugh. In hindsight it makes sense since there was an open area around there, but we were focused with the illusion of a mine entrance we thought we saw on the northern side, so we didn’t even consider it.

The best part about this map is the fact that the guy labeled the route we took as the “really stupid way to stanley-miller mine”, and he had a better way. From what I can tell this better way is something he found and not on a map anywhere. Suffice to say, I would agree with him!

So with all the ups and downs I did ~4500 ft for something that should have taken much less. I’m not sure if I feel I have unfinished business with the hike yet…

To Stanley-Miller Mine
Miles: ~15
Elevation Gain: 2000-3000 ft
Terrain: Same as above, PLUS: total cross-country exploration. No trail. Bushwacking. Yuccas, steep loose terrain. Bring protective clothing.

We will be adventuring up the East Fork of the San Gabriel River. But we won’t simply be stopping at the Bridge to Nowhere, about 5 miles up.

Instead, we’ll continue on up to an area less explored. We’ll pass through the Narrows, an area with deep canyons and many nice swimming holes to relax in. Some people may choose to stop and relax here.

For the few that are very adventurous, I will be continuing on to attempt to visit the abandoned Stanley-Miller mine. This is one of the mines around Iron Mt that very few ever get to.

For those who are interested in going that far, you must read our previous trip reports to 2 other mine exploration adventures to get a feel of what it will be like.

Allison Mine

Baldora and Widco Mines

I have no idea how hard exactly it will be to climb up from the riverbed to access the mine. It should only be about 1000-1500 ft above the river, but who knows the navigation difficulties we’ll encounter.

Ideally, I would like someone to lead a hike up to the Bridge / Narrows, and then I would take the few people who are moving quickly up and beyond to the mine.

I do not know how long this will take. Therefore, expect me to move at a brisk pace during the beginning of the day. I will not wait very long for the whole group to catch up. Please agree to stay with at least one other person.

Damnit, I think I’m going to plan it.

Since I was under some time constraints and ended up pushing myself more than normal, I could really feel the pain on my body. It started of minor, with some tingly sensations in my right leg. But then that soon was in my hands also. At the end, on top, I was feeling pretty terrible. Lightheaded, I wouldn’t say dizzy. I was almost there though.

This was definitely worth the second going. The path after Alison Saddle is pretty much well used now. All the yucca that stabbed me the first time and made the route almost unbearable has been cut away. The loose scree is still there though. Those steep sections are killer and a real time slower on the way down. Took us 3.5 hours just to get back to the cars.

Alright, here’s some more pictures, and then video are after the jump.

Update: StarTrekathon has moved to http://www.justin.tv/duplincountyman

There isn’t a video at the top or hereafter. I ran out or memory and only had 20 shots of memory available for the rest of the day.

You can check out all my pics from the day here.

Read the Meetup description here.

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
	1	N 34° 14' 13.58"	W 117° 45' 54.83"	620 m	0.000 mi	0s	-
	2	N 34° 14' 34.57"	W 117° 45' 24.39"	720 m	1.004 mi	29m 10s	2.06 mph
	3	N 34° 14' 38.72"	W 117° 44' 46.07"	992 m	0.999 mi	25m 50s	2.32 mph
	4	N 34° 15' 05.66"	W 117° 44' 19.03"	1203 m	1.004 mi	24m 50s	2.42 mph
	5	N 34° 15' 23.69"	W 117° 43' 24.17"	1437 m	1.000 mi	27m 41s	2.17 mph
	6	N 34° 15' 49.16"	W 117° 42' 56.58"	1317 m	1.001 mi	52m 40s	1.14 mph
	7	N 34° 16' 09.28"	W 117° 42' 18.57"	1293 m	0.997 mi	35m 41s	1.68 mph
	8	N 34° 16' 30.58"	W 117° 42' 08.55"	1445 m	0.998 mi	41m 00s	1.46 mph
	9	N 34° 16' 28.89"	W 117° 42' 09.55"	1427 m	0.998 mi	58m 10s	1.03 mph
	10	N 34° 15' 56.03"	W 117° 42' 30.58"	1268 m	1.005 mi	45m 30s	1.33 mph
	11	N 34° 15' 39.89"	W 117° 43' 13.78"	1368 m	0.997 mi	32m 40s	1.83 mph
	12	N 34° 15' 12.16"	W 117° 43' 49.98"	1298 m	1.004 mi	40m 50s	1.48 mph
	13	N 34° 14' 54.66"	W 117° 44' 41.58"	1162 m	0.996 mi	20m 00s	2.99 mph
	14	N 34° 14' 36.59"	W 117° 45' 01.11"	880 m	1.000 mi	22m 20s	2.69 mph
	15	N 34° 14' 29.65"	W 117° 45' 40.94"	621 m	1.003 mi	20m 20s	2.96 mph
	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

]]> http://socalhikes.com/2009/03/baldora-mine-hunt/feed/ 2 http://socalhikes.com/2009/03/east-fork-to-baldora-widco-mine-area/ http://socalhikes.com/2009/03/east-fork-to-baldora-widco-mine-area/#comments Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:52:33 +0000 Zé http://socalhikes.com/?p=1522

Final Stats:

Gain: 5200 ft
Distance: 14 miles

The housing market crash has forced me to be a bit more economical.

Others’ photos and Meetup link here

GPS track here

KML Google Earth file

Baldora and Widco Mine Hike at EveryTrail

This was a good adventure. The goal was to check out the area around the old Baldora/Widco mine in Dry Gulch, which lies southeast of Iron Mountain and next to Coldwater Canyon. The most feasible way to get there is by taking the Heaton Flat trail to the prominent saddle in which 3 trails diverge. The old trail to the left takes you to Allison Mine, the use trail straight ahead and up takes you to Iron Mountain, and the brushy trail to the right takes you down to Coldwater Canyon. This is the trail we took.

After hiking up to the saddle (~ 3000 ft gain in 4.5 miles), we started along this unmaintained trail. It immediately became pretty brushy, which was expected. And very soon we came upon parts of the trail that had been washed out, and the negotiation added some adventure.

The trail continued to be washed out in several areas; however, it was passable without much danger. The brush was annoying at times, but certainly less of a deterrent than the washed out trail. Getting down to the canyon bottom took a decent amount of time. Along the way, I was peering at Bighorn Ridge, Widman Ranch, and other landmarks. I thought I noticed some use trails heading up toward Bighorn Ridge, but I could have just been hallucinating.

Once we got to Coldwater Canyon, we turned north and veered to the left to make sure we went up Dry Gulch. This combined some rock hopping / bouldering and following an intermittent use trail along the left bank.

Now, on USGS maps and my garmin map, it is indicated that the Baldora and Widco are two separate mines, although people mention them as one. I wasn’t sure, so we made sure to check out both areas as indicated on the maps. The first is the Widco mine which is a bit lower and on the left side of Dry Gulch. There, we found an old shack and some equipment.

The actual location of the shack was a bit lower than the mine location as marked on my GPS, so I scrambled up a hundred feet or so until I was at the marked location. I ended up just around some large rocks which could have been the mine, but I did not see an entrance but admittedly did not thoroughly explore. I did notice that I scrambled up to more level ground, and as I walked down it, I realized it was an old road bed that went back down to the shack, so likely the mine was located where marked.

After that, we headed a bit further up the gulch and over to the right side to check out Baldora Mine. Here we found even more remnants including a shack and some big machinery. I’d assume this machinery would be placed close to the mine entrance, although we couldn’t find any.

Again, the actual location of the mine as located on my gps was a bit higher up, so we climbed up east toward the ridge splitting Dry Gulch and Coldwater canyon until we hit the spot. Again the location marked put us by some boulders, but no mine. After that, we descended and headed back the same way.

It would seem that there were indeed two mines since there was equipment and shacks in two locations though we did not actually find any mine entrances. I would guess there was at least one entrance but we just simply did not find it. I was tempted to continue hiking up toward Gold Dollar mine as brush was not a problem; at that point it was more trees and low-lying brush. But, that’s for another day.