jfanaselle
Adventurist
The following is a trip report from a small group outing that I led about 2 months ago. We traveled into the Mojave National Preserve in Southern California for a two day, one night adventure exploring old mine camps and villages. We had a total of 5 vehicles and 10 people on this trip, and everyone had a blast. The weather cooperated perfectly with us, staying in the low 80's each day. The region had also just gotten hit by a rain storm 2 days before we arrived, which kept the dust in check for our entire trip.
We began the weekend with a morning meet up in the SanBernardino area. After a delicious breakfast at IHOP, we headed north alongInterstate 15 into the desert community of Baker. Once we had filled our rigswith gas, our coolers with ice, and our bellies with beef jerky from the worldfamous Alien Jerky store, it was time to head east into the Mojave Preserve.
We took Kelbaker Road east from Baker toward the oldrailroad depot at Kelso, California. About 8 miles into the preserve, we gotoff of the pavement near Seventeen Mile Point and turned south onto the oldMojave Road and aired down:
From the Mojave Road, we took a few off-chute roads towardsome old mine sites and mining camps. The very first site turned out to be abust. We couldn't find the "Paymaster Mine," despite one of our groupmember’s son's valliant efforts climbing all around the hills to look for us:
We traveled further into the mountains and came upon an oldcamp for workers near the Paymaster site. All that remains is a stone chimneywhere a cabin once stood:
From there, we headed further back into the hills until welocated part of the old settlement near Seventeenmile Point. These cabins arein spectacular shape, and have been adopted by a desert off road club thatkeeps them in great condition. For the sake of ensuring that no one evervandalizes the cabins, the location is not published:
Wandering around the site yielded some great photoopportunities:
Lots of cool things to check out. Basically, everywhereyou'd step there was some kind of evidence of the activites of the past at thislocation.
Just watch out for the hidden cacti that blend in with thebrush! One member of our group was “attacked” by this piece of cactus, evenafter very carefully looking before kneeling down. This stuff blends in withthe brush really well:
We wandered up the road and checked out the mines:
This particular mine was blocked off about 20 feet inside,but you could see through the gate and it looked pretty impressive:
There was even an area where the original miners livedunderground:
The next mine we checked out had a vertical shaft and ahorizontal adit. Both were sealed off, but I was able to get a good shot downinside the vertical shaft:
From there, we took the vehicles further up the mountain tocheck out the Oso Fino Mine. The road to this mine turned out to be in reallybad shape, and not all of the vehicles in our group made it. It was by far thecraziest road I've taken my Xterra on, and I'm very surprised I didn't breaksomething along the way. Once at the top, we were rewarded with one of theoldest mine sites in the entire Mojave Preserve. This mine first beganproduction in 1890 and had a few additions over the years. It produced a goodamount of gold until the 1940s.
The main shaft was REALLY deep and was sealed off. I managedto snap a cool photo through the grate:
There was a nearby second entrance to the mine that was notsealed off, but was in no condition to enter:
From there, it was back down the road and on to our nextstop:
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We headed back out the way we came and hit the pavementagain. From there, we took Kelbaker road further southeast until we hit AikenMine Road, which took us to the Lava Tube:
From there, we continued along Aiken Mine Road to the oldAiken Cinder Mine:
This site was AMAZING! It began it's life as a massivecorporate mining operation in 1948 and operated all the way until 1990, whenthe operators of the mine defaulted on their lease of the property. Theyabruptly shut down operations and completely walked away, leaving everything inplace and intact. There are still over 500,000 tons of mined material at thesite that was never hauled off, and all kinds of heavy mining equipment that weexplored:
By this time, we had used up most of our daylight and werestill over an hour away from the location we originally planned to camp.Fortunately, one group member spotted a fire ring near the cinder mine thatturned out to be a very suitable camp spot. We weren't really sheltered fromthe elements, but it was a beautiful evening/night with only brief periods ofminor wind, so we were golden!
I quietly explored the area around the camp and bumped intoa massive jack rabbit. With his ears up, he stood about 2 and a half feet tall!He was dark gray with black tips on his ears and a long black tail. He actuallylooked kind of like a burro!
The sunset from the campsite was amazing:
And the night scenery wasn't half bad, either. The orangeglow is the lights of Las Vegas, about 150 miles to our north:
Unfortunately, once the sun went down, the wildlife hadnothing to do but come check us out. Now I've heard horror stories of CamelSpiders from some of my buddies who are in the Marine Corps, but I never knewthey lived in the Mojave Desert too. These suckers were UGLY! We had two thatkept running around the camp fire, tormenting us and scaring all of the ladies.One of our group members was able to pull them up on his cell phone where welearned that they can run 10 miles per hour and jump 4 feet in the air. Theyare not deathly poisonous and are supposedly kind of friendly unless provoked.This particular guy used his front "arms" to scare the crap out ofall of us, putting them up in the air and acting like he wanted to fight us.Since he's so "friendly" it's possible that he just wanted a hug:
We began the weekend with a morning meet up in the SanBernardino area. After a delicious breakfast at IHOP, we headed north alongInterstate 15 into the desert community of Baker. Once we had filled our rigswith gas, our coolers with ice, and our bellies with beef jerky from the worldfamous Alien Jerky store, it was time to head east into the Mojave Preserve.
We took Kelbaker Road east from Baker toward the oldrailroad depot at Kelso, California. About 8 miles into the preserve, we gotoff of the pavement near Seventeen Mile Point and turned south onto the oldMojave Road and aired down:
From the Mojave Road, we took a few off-chute roads towardsome old mine sites and mining camps. The very first site turned out to be abust. We couldn't find the "Paymaster Mine," despite one of our groupmember’s son's valliant efforts climbing all around the hills to look for us:
We traveled further into the mountains and came upon an oldcamp for workers near the Paymaster site. All that remains is a stone chimneywhere a cabin once stood:
From there, we headed further back into the hills until welocated part of the old settlement near Seventeenmile Point. These cabins arein spectacular shape, and have been adopted by a desert off road club thatkeeps them in great condition. For the sake of ensuring that no one evervandalizes the cabins, the location is not published:
Wandering around the site yielded some great photoopportunities:
Lots of cool things to check out. Basically, everywhereyou'd step there was some kind of evidence of the activites of the past at thislocation.
Just watch out for the hidden cacti that blend in with thebrush! One member of our group was “attacked” by this piece of cactus, evenafter very carefully looking before kneeling down. This stuff blends in withthe brush really well:
We wandered up the road and checked out the mines:
This particular mine was blocked off about 20 feet inside,but you could see through the gate and it looked pretty impressive:
There was even an area where the original miners livedunderground:
The next mine we checked out had a vertical shaft and ahorizontal adit. Both were sealed off, but I was able to get a good shot downinside the vertical shaft:
From there, we took the vehicles further up the mountain tocheck out the Oso Fino Mine. The road to this mine turned out to be in reallybad shape, and not all of the vehicles in our group made it. It was by far thecraziest road I've taken my Xterra on, and I'm very surprised I didn't breaksomething along the way. Once at the top, we were rewarded with one of theoldest mine sites in the entire Mojave Preserve. This mine first beganproduction in 1890 and had a few additions over the years. It produced a goodamount of gold until the 1940s.
The main shaft was REALLY deep and was sealed off. I managedto snap a cool photo through the grate:
There was a nearby second entrance to the mine that was notsealed off, but was in no condition to enter:
From there, it was back down the road and on to our nextstop:
[/URLhttp://s231.photobucket.com/user/jfanaselle/media/Mojave Preserve 05-17-15/111.jpg.htmlhttp://s231.photobucket.com/user/jfanaselle/media/Mojave Preserve 05-17-15/111.jpg.htmlhttp://s231.photobucket.com/user/jfanaselle/media/Mojave Preserve 05-17-15/111.jpg.html]We headed back out the way we came and hit the pavementagain. From there, we took Kelbaker road further southeast until we hit AikenMine Road, which took us to the Lava Tube:
From there, we continued along Aiken Mine Road to the oldAiken Cinder Mine:
This site was AMAZING! It began it's life as a massivecorporate mining operation in 1948 and operated all the way until 1990, whenthe operators of the mine defaulted on their lease of the property. Theyabruptly shut down operations and completely walked away, leaving everything inplace and intact. There are still over 500,000 tons of mined material at thesite that was never hauled off, and all kinds of heavy mining equipment that weexplored:
By this time, we had used up most of our daylight and werestill over an hour away from the location we originally planned to camp.Fortunately, one group member spotted a fire ring near the cinder mine thatturned out to be a very suitable camp spot. We weren't really sheltered fromthe elements, but it was a beautiful evening/night with only brief periods ofminor wind, so we were golden!
I quietly explored the area around the camp and bumped intoa massive jack rabbit. With his ears up, he stood about 2 and a half feet tall!He was dark gray with black tips on his ears and a long black tail. He actuallylooked kind of like a burro!
The sunset from the campsite was amazing:
And the night scenery wasn't half bad, either. The orangeglow is the lights of Las Vegas, about 150 miles to our north:
Unfortunately, once the sun went down, the wildlife hadnothing to do but come check us out. Now I've heard horror stories of CamelSpiders from some of my buddies who are in the Marine Corps, but I never knewthey lived in the Mojave Desert too. These suckers were UGLY! We had two thatkept running around the camp fire, tormenting us and scaring all of the ladies.One of our group members was able to pull them up on his cell phone where welearned that they can run 10 miles per hour and jump 4 feet in the air. Theyare not deathly poisonous and are supposedly kind of friendly unless provoked.This particular guy used his front "arms" to scare the crap out ofall of us, putting them up in the air and acting like he wanted to fight us.Since he's so "friendly" it's possible that he just wanted a hug:
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