No More Mine

Wednesday, 26 April 2023

A call to Canon tech support started my day on a high note. As the agent explained, "The camera tries to auto-focus by sending out a pulse of light and timing its reflection. When you shoot in the dark, there is no reflection, and the camera won't take a picture." The simple solution? Put the lens in manual-focus mode to override that. Nice to know; I'll try that in Joshua Tree in a couple nights.

Perhaps I dreaded the hour-long drive back to the park; perhaps I just enjoyed the easy camaraderie with my host. In either case, I lingered a bit before finally grabbing my camera and heading south for more explorations.

NPS signs and web pages state that Golden Canyon is "indisputably the most popular trail in the park."

While the canyon hike is one-mile long, you can continue on to Zabriskie Point before looping back (7.8 miles), loop back at Gower Gulch (4.3 miles round-trip), or take a spur to Red Cathedral (3.0 miles out-and-back). I considered the Gower Gulch loop, but due to my later start and my large wish-list, I opted for Red Cathedral.

The yellow canyon walls quickly hemmed in the trail, with glimpses of taller hills in the background. After one mile, the trail veered left,

away from the narrow passage connecting to the longer hikes. The Red Cathedral spur soon changed character, forcing me to scramble over boulders or under overhangs as the surrounding cliffs grew.

At the end of the trail, a narrow, sandy outcropping led to a vista over the badlands. Three pairs of hikers sat there, enjoying the views.

I chatted with the others a few minutes. Stories of my parks challenge fascinated a pair of men from Cape Cod, who asked several questions about it. As they gingerly left to work their way down the steep, sandy trail, I followed them, regaling them with more tales. One of them mentioned the desert heat (already in the high 80s, with less wind than yesterday) taxed them. "Hard to believe that two days ago we were hiking in the snow in Yosemite, but when they closed the park due to flooding, we came here instead."

His partner mentioned they would leave this park tomorrow, a day early. "They're having an electrical outage all day tomorrow. No lights, no A/C. Something about Southern Cal Edison revamping their electrical grid. It's supposed to let them shed less light at night - got to keep up the standards to keep their certification as an International Dark Sky Park."

Time to poke beneath the surface of the park. Prospectors traveling to the California gold fields dubbed this land 'Death Valley' after an early wagon train saw 13 pioneers die. (The Shoshone that lived here for generations saw it as a place of life, not death, if you lived in harmony with it. They called it 'Timbisha'.) White people soon saw it for its mineral wealth, initially attracting gold- and silver-seekers.

In the 1880s, people discovered the valley held borax, a mineral used for such things as pesticide, glass, laundry soap, and enamel. One of the first operations was the Harmony Borax works, with a large mill to process the oar

located north of Furnace Creek. Due to the expense of moving material to the nearest rail station (165 miles away), they had to partially process the ore on site. Maybe you've heard of 20-mule-team Borax - this is where the companies hooked the ore carts to a team of twenty mules (actually, 18 mules and two horses), along with food and water for the people and animals. The rear wheels on the carts stood 7' high!

The ruins still standing in the valley began operation in late 1883 and could produce three tons of borax daily (except in the summer, when the heat forced operations to pause). This particular outfit only lasted five years before the owner's business went under.

With the heat ramping up, I detoured to the high country. The park map called it 'Emigrant Canyon Rd'; the road sign stated 'Wildrose'. Once I figured that out and backtracked, I drove up the canyon to almost 5000' above sea level (with the last couple miles on an improved dirt road), to the remains of the Eureka mine.

Pete Aguereberry, a Basque teenager that emigrated to the US in search of gold, nearly died crossing Death Valley in the fiery days of summer 1905. After a rancher nursed him back to health, he and Shorty Harris found a promising spot and filed claims on the north and south side of the hill.

Three hundred people soon came to work the claim, founding a town that Shorty and Pete originally called Harrisberry, until Shorty changed it to Harrisburg. That may have reflected growing tensions there, and the claims wound up in court in 1907. Pete won control of the mine in 1909, and he worked the claim by himself (except for some help from a nephew when his health faltered) for nearly 40 years.

I felt refreshed in the cooler air, with more vegetation surrounding me - including splashes of color.

On the hillside, frames for the mine shaft stood against the ravages of time. The ruins of a small cabin - hardly large enough for a man to sleep in - sat at the base.

On the side of the hill, rail tracks ended abruptly at an adit into the mine. (Of course, shafts and adits are gated throughout the park, allowing bats access but not for people.)

I had time for one more stop. Back at Stovepipe Wells, the temperature had climbed into the upper 90s, with scant breeze to temper the heat. That didn't stop numerous people from taking short walks into the Mesquite Dunes,

looking for interesting perspectives, maybe a photo with a splash of color against the tan sand.

The dunes had a mesmerizing quality to them.

The ranger told me that the mesquite bushes could push their roots down 80' or more to access water. Try to pull up that weed, you gardeners!

Other plants shared the landscape with the mesquite.

I spent half an hour wandering the dunes

before deciding to face the 90-minute drive back.

For my last night in Nevada, I treated Pat to dinner at the only restaurant in Amargosa Valley, then prepared to head south the next morning.