Tweet
We had an interesting trip to the Owens Valley two weekends ago. We headed up Friday morning and for once covered the distance in a reasonable amount of time. After dropping the trailer at the Diaz Lake campground we headed over to the Reward Mine for a quick run-through. Dave and Stacy got the nickle tour of the more interesting parts of the mine. We investigated a drift we neglected last time and also mapped out a few shafts we were interested in. Our long lost 50' rope was found to much rejoicing. It was still coiled up but not in the spot where it was left. Weird. I'd remembered to bring my rock hammer this time and we spent quite a while chipping out interesting minerals and crystals on the top level. Someone has been putting in some serious effort to mine this area. We found a number of spent drill bits, a huge extension cord and a gas generator hidden in one of the side chambers. After exiting the mine we headed into town for some much deserved pizza and then back to the trailer for showers and a nice fire.
Saturday was to have been spent exploring the Santa Rosa Mine but Mother Nature had other ideas. We awoke to rain at camp and snow at the higher elevations. We were able to make it to just below the Santa Rosa but the rest of the road was too slippery to conquer. Due to the snowfall rate we became concerned that we'd be snowed in after hours in the mine so we abandoned the Santa Rosa for this trip and headed to lower elevations. We scouted out the mines and prospects closer to the highway including the Viking and White Swan mines. The Viking has an interesting vertical shaft without ladders. The White Swan wasn't very large and we explored all of it in a little less than an hour. We then ventured over to the Talc City area and found a number of promising shafts. As night fell another storm blew in and we had blizzard conditions, even at lower elevations. We headed back to camp with a good list of mines to rappel into during warmer weather.
All of the pictures are up at www.undergroundexplorers.com
Mike
Saturday was to have been spent exploring the Santa Rosa Mine but Mother Nature had other ideas. We awoke to rain at camp and snow at the higher elevations. We were able to make it to just below the Santa Rosa but the rest of the road was too slippery to conquer. Due to the snowfall rate we became concerned that we'd be snowed in after hours in the mine so we abandoned the Santa Rosa for this trip and headed to lower elevations. We scouted out the mines and prospects closer to the highway including the Viking and White Swan mines. The Viking has an interesting vertical shaft without ladders. The White Swan wasn't very large and we explored all of it in a little less than an hour. We then ventured over to the Talc City area and found a number of promising shafts. As night fell another storm blew in and we had blizzard conditions, even at lower elevations. We headed back to camp with a good list of mines to rappel into during warmer weather.
All of the pictures are up at www.undergroundexplorers.com
Mike
Comment