The Inyo Range Salt Tram Expedition, September 2010 - - - Part 4

Saturday was the second day of our "big" adventure. After breaking camp in the morning we zoomed back across the desert towards Manzanar. About half of the group needed more ice (beer was in danger of warming!!) and they stopped in Lone Pine. The other half parked along the highway near the visitor center at the junction of 395 and 136. Soon we were all together again and made the turnoff at Keeler to head up towards Cerro Gordo.

Here is Dave coming up one of the grades. Both he and I felt the extra weight of our trailers on the steeper uphills.

We made a short stop just above Cerro Gordo, partly because I started a wrong turn at the split. Doh! The stop also provided a brief respite for Da Snork's spunky little diesel engine. Yeah, I planned that!

Before long we had completed the traverse of the shelf road. It is always a great road for inspiring first timers to practice clenching their seat with their posteriors and digging their nails into their rig's grab bars. We parked at a nice spot near our first hike which would take us along the old water line that supplied Cerro Gordo.

This hike is maybe a one mile traverse that ambles by a nicely constructed two room mountainside "residence" for the man who probably kept the pump house in order. Some interesting artifacts can be seen there too. Then we hiked on to the remains of the pumphouse and finally a horizontal mine shaft that bores straight in for a quarter mile.

I've made this hike before but as always when traveling with a lively group, I learned that someone else could be more observant and a better thinker than I had been. Sigh. On previous hikes on the trail I had seen some T-shaped metal bars sticking out of the ground and thought that they were supports for the water lines.

Kevin (The Observant One) noticed something else and reached a far more accurate conclusion. He offered that these pieces of pipe jutting out of the slope below each of the T-bars were "connected".

Kevin's conclusion was that the T-bars were attached to valves that would be used to drain the buried water pipeline in preparation for winter's freezing temperatures. This piece of pipe in the picture was the drain pipe.

Way to go Kevin!

Here is a shot of one of the sketchier portions of the trail.

And here are some shots of one of the better preserved and reinforced portions of the pipeline trail

Men with black shirts and tan pants standing at the pumphouse. Very suspicious.....



Thank you to Eric for this photo!

Next we drove our rigs further along the dirt road to get to Mexican Springs. Along the way we came to the steep uphill set of turns that had 10 inches of loose dirt and rock and I found that the weight of my trailer was enough to bog me down. My rear ARB locker is out of order so I came to a standstill, effectively blocking the whole group from further progress. OOPS!  Backing up was a pain as the front wheels just slid without biting and neutralized my steering, letting the trailer start an unwanted turn. The whole gang grabbed a hold of my trailer and manually steered it back down the trail. Bill went ahead with his FJ Cruiser and we hooked up a strap. He toggled his E-Locker on and gave me the tugs that I needed to easily make it up. Everyone else made it up just fine after that, especially Dave made it up with no asisstance while pulling his trailer.

Mexican Springs has long been on my list and I'm glad we took the time as I've driven by it so many times before. The exterior is nothing special but the details are fascinating. This and the previous hike's buildings may have been prefabricated based on some of the markings that we observed on the sheet metal.

The pump really was steam powered and the boiler designs are quite interesting. I don't know why there were so many of them on location, at least 3 so maybe they wore out? This pump house is said to be somehow connected to Mortimer Belshaw who built the "Yellow Grade" toll road from Keeler to Cerro Gordo.

There were interesting and cryptic pencilled notes on the walls.

Also lots of other cool but rusty machinery

Before we made the hike back up to our vehicles Linus seemed to be just absorbing what was left of the pumphouse, maybe imagining the noise and the clatter that surely echoed off of the canyon walls so many years ago.

Da Snork! A rolling time capsule.

On this September 2010 Salt Tram Trip, Linus drove out in his 1965 Land Rover with its 65 (yes, Sixty-Five) horsepower diesel engine, glass turn signal covers, ancient Hi-Lift, vintage winch and other authentic  touches. I wanted to post up all of the pictures that I had as I really enjoyed seeing it on this trip.

Sticker Affixed!

Thanks again to Linus for the great commerative sticker! It looks perfect on my 4Runner, right next to the original 2008 sticker

The Inyo Range Salt Tram Expedition, September 2010 - - - Part 3

Friday was the day with the convergence of several vehicles, meeting together with the purpose of arriving at two awesome gold mines: The Brown Monster and Reward Mines. This sprung from an earlier plan that Kevin had hatched and it seemed a perfect way to start our first day. Kevin and I started at Oh-Dark Hundred, or 5 AM, meeting at our local hardware store's big parking lot. We checked out all of the latest mods to each other's rigs that our local welding shop had completed for us. Kevin's Bronco now has an internal roll cage and I had some mods completed on my trailer. We met up with Dave at Cleghorn Road, a popular offroad trail along Highway 15. Eric and Jane had a slightly late start, but caught up with us along Highway 395 before we got to the Junction with Highway 14. Just past that junction Bill happened to spot us at a gas station and swung by to hook up with the growing convoy. Alan was going to make it to the mines by 4:30 PM. That just left meeting up with Linus at the road leading up to Kennedy Meadows.

On a previous Salt Tram trip I had designed a sticker to share with the others.

 Little did I know that Linus had hatched a plan to surprise us with an updated sticker just for our merry groups' adventure. When I pulled into the meet spot next to Linus' vintage blue 1965 Land Rover with a canvas top.........

.... I saw the words "Trust Me" on one of the stickers! Oh my goodness! The only word that would have surprised me more would be "Banned". (LOL)

Linus made enough for everyone and generously gave two to each person. Kevin was the first to apply his!
On the Rover Linus had a collection of similar stickers that inspired the updated 2010 design.

Soon we were off towards Manzanar where we'd turn eastward on the road that crosses a WW-2 era runway. Kevin told us how it had once been used by an autocross group that also helped with maintenance to keep the concrete free of weeds. Before long we were parked at the base of the canyon where a steep trail lead upwards, gaining some hard won altitude to reach the first structure.

Check out how high above the desert floor Kevin is as he enjoys a brief respite from the sun's steady blaze.

Here's Dave using some canyoneering techniques :) to stay upright on the loose steep trail.

Hey! Look how high we are now!

Simply put, the mines are unbelievable. Passageways, large fissures cleared of ore and kept open with a forest of huge timber beams, small railways for ore carts, fluttering bats, artifacts and more awaited us. Later on Alan told us how he knew where to drop numbered tennis balls down a shaft on this side of the mountain and then go to the mine on the other side to find some of the balls had made it into that mine!

Linus investigating the source of a breeze of cool fresh air in a side shaft

Kevin showing us his super human strength as he holds up the weight of the mountain.

Jodi called this part of the mine Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

We decided that this shaft was where the Morlocks were plotting the best way to come out and capture us for their next big meal......

Once back outside we enjoyed the warm sun for a bit before heading back down to our vehicles and driving to the other mine. We could easily see more high on the slopes that we could explore on subsequent trips.

The Reward Mine has an enormous pile of tailings near the entrance that make for an ideal camp spot. Once we had the vehicles situated we entered the enormous horizontal entrance shaft. You can find some YouTube videos of people actually driving their trucks in there but it stirs up far too much dust to be enjoyable. On our trek through the mine we saw a lot of new survey markings in orange paint. Maybe the current price of gold will be cause for working the mine again?

This crazy looking vertical shaft is the connector to the Brown Monster that allowed gold ore to be more easily transferred to trucks to haul it out. It is also where some of the tennis balls made their way down!

Purely by coincidence we headed out of the mine at 4:30 PM and there was Alan to greet us, exactly on time!

We took time to check out each other's rigs including Dave's sweet Adventure Trailer

Soon we were collaborating on dinner with flank steak, cold Newcastle Beer in a Keg and other great delights. Before long we were ready to turn in and I got to spend my first night in my new trailer's tent.

The Inyo Range Salt Tram Expedition, September 2010 Part 2!

After weeks of planning our trip we finally had a solid list of attendees and vehicles:

• Teotwaki (Jim) 4Runner & trailer
• KJP1969 (Kevin)  Bronco
• TeraWanderer (Alan) Frontier
• ETAV8R  (Eric & Jane)  Tacoma with FlipPac
• Linus  with the coolest vintage Land Rover
• Stuck (Bill) FJ Cruiser
• CnynRat (Dave & Jodi) FJ Cruiser & trailer

We also had to have a fairly good schedule because we'd be meeting up from all over California and trying to see and do many things in just 3 days.

Friday:  drive towards Lone Pine and congregate by 12 Noon at the Brown Monster & Reward Mines

Originally called the Eclipse mine and then the Brown Monster mine. The Reward mine supplied the largest trove of gold in Owens Valley. The mines were active from 1860 to 1936. The town of Reward served as a trading center for the mines in the valley and had a post office from 1900 to 1906.
KJP1969's writeup is here: http://mandamus.typepad.com/onefullplate/2008/06/expedition.html
It is located roughly across from Manzanar: http://www.nps.gov/manz/ about 6 miles east of 395 on the west slope of the Inyo Mountains. Manzanar is 9 miles north of Lone Pine and 6 miles south of Independence in the Owens Valley, about 226 miles from "Los Angeles" and 200 from San Bernardino.
Interesting article "Minerals of the Reward Mine Or What’s in a Name?" by Walt Margerum http://www.mineralsocal.org/bulletin/2005/2005_mar.htm
The Highway 395 Manzanar-Reward Road intersection is at 36.7343659N 118.1500304W, proceed roughly NE, cross the old 1940's Manzanar airfield, cross the bridge over the canal and keep going to where the road goes NE at 36.739675N 118.0663562W at the intersection of 3rd Road and heads up the slopes of the mountains. other Link(s): http://www.ripleysghosttowns.com/inyo.html
We planned to spend the afternoon carefully examing the two mines and then have the first of two potluck dinners. In our preparations for this trip we exchanged quite a few emails about potluck dinners so it is always important to keep in mind how a great meal can cap off a day of outdoor activities. One of the mine structures, carefully perched in the steep terrain. Note the hiking trail that passes around it.

Saturday:

Have breakfast and head back out to highway 395 and drive to Keeler where we'd head up through Cerro Gordo. Then we'd go across the Inyos with stops at a mine shaft that goes through a 1/4 mile of solid rock and at Mexican springs where steam powered pumps labored to send water to Cerro Gordo.

After that we'd set up camp near the historic Salt Tram Summit Station shown here in its glory days with a fully covered tramway station and in later days.

We'd explore the surroundings, set up camp on the far side of the structure and have another potluck dinner.

Sunday;

Some folks would have to leave late in the morning and some would stay for a hike to the west along the path of the tramway and make some interesting discoveries.....