After what was becoming our routine breakfast of yogurt with fruit and granola accompanied by coffee, we looked at the still-unsettled weather and decided to find a canyon with mines to explore rather than climbing a peak. Fortunately for us, the Panamint Valley where we were is so full of canyons with old mines that there were almost too many to pick from -- especially since I had picked up a good guidebook full of interesting off-the-beaten-path spots. We could easily have spent the whole trip goofing off in this little region without even making it over to Death Valley.
But that wasn't the plan, so I pointed my finger at the book and landed on a page that told us to go park behind a limestone quarry here:
and head up the hills. As we started walking up what used to be a mining road, we noticed that it had a curious track worn into part of it. If you look closely, you can see small burro footprints. Apparently, there are enough wild burros out here that they make their own burro-beaten paths.
and eventually started running into remnant structures from the gold and silver mining days of the 1880's.
Chad provided us with most of the day's good pictures.
and plenty of views. Somewhere in here, we heard burros braying in a side ravine, but aside from some moment that Chad caught out of the corner of his eye, we didn't actually spot any of them. I suspect the burros were hiding behind a rock, patiently waiting for us to go away so they could trot up and down their burro trails looking for food and water, but it was easy to imagine them sneaking quietly behind us, diving away only when we turned around to look.
At one point we hit a junction where there were several fallen wooden structures and I had to consult my map to figure out where some mine shafts with particularly colorful minerals were supposed to be. That way!
"That way" proved to rise a bit more steeply.
A wee barrel cactus braved the rocks.
In just a few minutes, I found the expected hole in the ground. This is an obscure enough location that the mine entrance was not barricaded off. What is hard to tell from this picture is that the shaft starts right at the contact between two very different rock types, and there is quite a bit of color in the mineralization at the contact.
I poked my head in far enough to admire the rocks. Chad went a little further, but not out of sight of daylight. Though the tunnel seemed solid, one never knows when that might change, and one also never knows what remnant malodorous mine fumes may still be present, so we didn't go too far, tempting though it was.
With the day's nominal goal found, we followed the burro tracks back down the hill. The storm still hadn't fully blown its way through,
leading to jolly changeable sunlight pools on the landscape.
At this point, I thought we might wild camp near another canyon on the east side of the valley, but it turned out the dirt road going there was covered in dreadful washboard. One could rattle one's teeth out by going slowly and taking forever (not fun), or one could try to go fast enough to skim over the top of the bumps (didn't really smooth it out and led to some disconcerting loss of lateral traction). Chad looked really quite pained until I pointed out that if we turned around and drove up the paved road for about half an hour, we would hit the campground at Panamint Springs, where they fortunately had a lovely site on the edge of the tent camping area for us for $10. And we got there just before it started to rain!
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