Trail ride to an abandoned gold mine

 Wow, has it really been almost 10 years since I've posted here? Well that's about to change!

I'm not sure if I've shared here before or not, but one of my hobbies is prospecting for gold. It's definitely not a money making endeavor but it's a fun way to get out in nature and explore. And it's always cool to see the shiny stuff in your pan at the end of the day.

At least once a year I try to take a week or so and go prospecting in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. Beautiful country over there. Lots of wildlife we don't get to see much on the west (wet) side of the state. It's pretty common to see big horn sheep wandering the hills around camp. Deer and wild turkey are often visitors in camp itself, and sometimes the free range cows wander through as well. 

As a gold producing region there are plenty of active claims in the area, but lode mines are fairly rare. This year a group from camp decided to take a trail ride up to one of the abandoned mines in the area. We all loaded up in our trucks, side-by-side, quads, dirt bikes, whatever we had available and headed up the roads to the mine site. 

Now I should mention that where we camp is down in a fairly steep valley, and the mine is up near the top of the ridge that runs to the south of camp. There's about a 1500 foot elevation change in just under 2 miles as the crow flies. Luckily the roads (or maybe they're better described as trails at some points) wind around but they're still pretty steep in some spots.

I won't lie, there were parts that I was holding on for dear life. Especially since I was just a passenger, not in control.

In this picture on the left you can see the road we came up just a little bit ago off in distance. The road definitely gains elevation quickly.

Here's a view of the hills and valleys from one of our rest stops. Luckily this day the smoke from the wild fires was pretty decent but you can still see the haze out there. A couple of days during the week the smoke was thick as fog and you wouldn't be able to see more than a couple hundred feet at this elevation.

Finally made it to the mine site. I know it's kind of hard to see in this picture, it's better if you zoom in. It's the black rectangle in the top center of the picture. Below it you can see the remains of the stamp mill they used to pulverize the ore to extract the gold.

Unfortunately this was the only picture of the mine that I was able to get. You see, in camp we get no cell phone coverage at all, being at the bottom of the valley. Usually it's a 10-15 minute drive down a pot-holed, wash-boarded gravel road to get to a place where you can make a phone call. So while we were at the top of the hill with coverage I chose to call my wife instead of immediately heading over to check out the mine like everyone else did. So by the time I'd finished talking to her everyone else had finished exploring the mine and were ready to go back. The mine shaft itself is gated off so you can't get inside so you there's not a whole lot of exploring you can do. However, I will definitely be back at some point to do some more looking around.

As one final parting shot, here is a panorama I took from the top of the hill. Our camp site is where the deeper valley on the left of the other side meets up with this ridge we're on, and it's only about a mile and a half as the crow flies from this spot. But 1500 feet lower down. 

P.S. while talking to one of the other guys on the ride he told me about his Garmin In-Link Mini satellite communicator (Amazon Affiliate link). It's main use is to be able to send emergency distress calls and location information when you're in the back country and have an emergency, but he was telling me about how it's able to send text messages through the satellites. I might think about getting one for next year, so I'm able to at least send text messages to my wife without having to drive out of camp each day. Does anyone have experience with one of these devices? If so leave me a comment on how you like it please!

Thanks for stopping by!