Friday, continued ... 9/8/17

We were on a roll today, wanting to see as much of the Mammoth environs as possible, including the old mine and Old Mammoth. After leaving the burger joint in town, we looped around toward Castle Crag (below) and the mine. Mammoth Lakes is a fairly good-sized town, but not really easy to decipher if you're looking for something like a mine.

Lake Mamie (honest) and Castle Crag.  

We finally found the mine trailhead at the end of a campground around the back side of Lake Mary.  As I mentioned yesterday, we forgot to take our lunch cooler, AND we also forgot to take long-sleeved shirts with us.  Hence, we had no way to stay warm for the now 55° temps except to move fast!  I keep hoping one day we'll get it all together!

The foothills of the western Sierra are pockmarked by gold mines, including where we live in Nevada City.  That said, we wanted to see the old gold mine on the eastern Sierra here at Mammoth.  I found a fantastic US Forest Service tour brochure online, which I'll link here.  It's an 8-page pdf that's a lot of fun to look at, and it has a load of info.

Most of the buildings have fallen in or down or completely collapsed, but it was interesting to us to see where they were and gauge how they must have looked in the mine's heyday. The photos below are representative of what we saw.

It's always like "air-conditioning" when you're standing in front of a mine entrance (adit). Jimmy asked me how I knew what an adit was.  Crossword puzzles and Scrabble, man!  I couldn't see very far in beyond the gate, although water was flowing out.

Lots of Mountain Chickadees were chattering and flitting hither and yon.

This mountain is where they were pulling gold from.

You see some of the tailings piles at right. 

Dude!

 Uh-oh, flat tire.

This is one of the bunkhouses, now occupied by little rodents of all kinds, I'm sure. Imagine how cold this'd be in winter, when the temperatures drop into the minus category! They used cast-ion wood stoves for heat, and they had no electricity or running water. "Often when the miners got up in the morning, they had to crack the ice in their washbasins." I'd rather be in Tergel, thanks.

By the time we began our descent (we were on our way to the upper adit, but the path was too steep), we heard the first thunder boomer. In our shorts and Tees, we were getting cold, and we sure as heck didn't want to be caught on a mountain in a thunderstorm! We heard several more loud claps, but we made it to Smartie (we walked smartly down the hill) before any raindrops fell. Being in the car felt great, as in warm. So, we didn't make it to old town Mammoth after all, with dark skies and big wet drops falling. That's all right, we'll save it for next time. We stopped for gas in Mammoth ($3.65/gal) before heading home to Tergel at 5pm. We had a long, full day, with lots of steps, great hikes, and plenty of sights.

We didn't stay up late ....