Neva Lakes

Posted on October 10, 2023 by dhill

Saturday, October 6

Two lakes sit due south of Mount Neva, a few yards east of the Continental Divide, at nearly 12,000′ above sea level. I’ve been wanting to hike there for a few weeks but couldn’t fit it into the schedule. It’s getting late enough in the season that if I don’t do it now, I won’t do it this year.

I talked Chad into going with me. The last time I took him off trail, we traversed a steep forested hillside that made him quite uncomfortable. And early in that hike, he tweaked his ankle a bit. He didn’t have a great time.

So I was pleasantly surprised he agreed to go on a hike I described as sunny but cold, with winds that might drive us from the lakes within minutes, and to get there, we’d have two hours off the trail over a route that ProTrails describes as marshy with a steep wall at the end.

We left my place at seven. I figured the trailhead wouldn’t be as busy as it is in August. It was a calculated risk, and I had no Plan B. Generally I reach the high school before the rangers are staffing their station. Today we arrived just as the ranger put out the “FULL” sign for the Fourth of July trailhead.

He told us that there may still be parking available there. The ranger up at the trailhead was now on her way down with a count of available parking. We were directed to park next to an orange cone in the school parking lot, first in line for any empty spots. We waited maybe fifteen minutes before being told to head on up. Next in line behind us was a big Audi sedan. It’s a rough road with lots of holes and exposed rocks. Three or four cars later was a BMW sedan. That those guys got those cars up there indicates you can drive damn near anything up there if you’re so inclined.

Before shutting off the car, I checked the temperature: 28 degrees F.

To reach the lakes, we headed up the Arapaho Pass trail to the derelict mine and the junction with the trail that climbs the flank of South Arapaho Peak. It’s a two-mile hike from the trailhead, rising about 1100′ at a fairly constant grade. It took us an hour. From the trail junction, we’d descend a couple hundred feet to the floor of the valley. Chad was glad to be done with the relentless trail.

We’re pretty much right at treeline when we leave the trail. The trees are in clumps, fairly easy to skirt. Any flat spaces between the trees and along the stream are normally boggy and marshy, but this late in the season, everything is dry. Well, almost everything. We do come across a few bogs, but it’ll never be any drier than it is today. We followed a number of game trails that appeared and faded out at the edge of a dry marsh or a small talus field. Regardless, navigation is as easy as it gets with these expansive views.

For about a mile above our stream crossing, we gain only about three hundred feet. It’s a pleasant, leisurely stroll. The sun is shining brightly in a deep cobalt sky with a gentle breeze. It has snowed here, lightly, a couple of times over the last several days. A thin dusting of snow clings to the high, steep, shady, northern mountainside. Where we’re walking, there are occasional spots of snow in the shade of a bush or rock. One pool we passed had a very thin sheet of ice on it. It was nearly invisible. I gently pushed on it. Not hard enough to crack it, but I did make some water rise through a few silver dollar-sized holes at the other end of the ice. Pretty cool.

Being off-trail, I expected not to see any other hikers. Just before we came to ProTrails’ “steep wall” below the lakes, we spotted three hikers with a dog working their way up the valley, still on the other side of the stream. They passed us pretty quickly, they were moving at a pretty good clip. We had a brief chat as to the best route. This was their first trip to these lakes, too. I said we were going to try to make use of any grassy ramps a bit to the left of the lakes to avoid the steep talus. This would take us to the upper lake first, putting us on its southeastern shore.

We arrived at the upper lake pretty much on schedule. We found a nice spot for our picnic not too close to the other hikers, whose dog ran over to greet us when we appeared. We had a nice view of Mount Neva. There was still not a cloud in the sky, and the winds were about as calm as one can expect beneath the Divide. I brought beers. I had a blood orange blonde, Chad had the lager.

After the other group left, Chad spotted a couple of hikers descending a ravine from the ridgeline between Mount Neva and Mount Jasper. There’s a route from Arapaho Pass that summits Neva and comes down here. Not long after those two guys, wearing shorts and lightweight shoes, disappeared down the outlet of the lake we saw two more hikers mid-descent. Too steep for me, I think.

The upper lake looks to already have drained two feet below its high-water mark, judging from the bathtub ring. The outlet is high and dry. A few yards below the lake, following the dry outlet we came to running water: the upper lake is draining from here. It’s a pretty strong flow. I’d guess it’s eight or ten feet of elevation below the surface of the lake. This drain is surrounded by tufts of grass. The water flows gently to a small pond that then drains into the lower lake. The lower lake is still full.

Leaving the lower lake at its outlet, we were at the top of a large, steep talus field. The grassy ramps we came up on are quite a ways to our right. We worked our way down diagonally, crossing more talus than is to my liking.

Mount Neva
Upper Neva Lake
Lower Lake viewed from Upper
Upper Neva Lake and Mount Neva
Lower Neva Lake

Navigation back across the valley and up to the trail is, again, dead simple. The trail we’re heading toward is a plainly visible slash across the mountain ahead of us. Again, we gained and lost social trails. A few times, I saw the footprints of the hikers with the lightweight footwear.

After crossing the stream, we needed to climb about two hundred feet to gain the trail. Getting near the end, I found a faint game trail. We followed it for a short while, but I decided I wanted to climb faster and took a more direct route. We stopped for a short break when we got to the trail. I figured we were between the mine and the junction. We discussed whether we wanted to head up to the mine or not. We decided not.

This was a good choice. It turns out we were above the mine and didn’t need to make a side trip to get there. Had we made the side trip, we’d have gone the wrong way.

When I was here before, I wanted to get a picture of the vertical mine shaft. There was no barrier around it. I’m smart enough to go nowhere near the slippery-looking edge, but I could imagine coming across it in the dark or in bad weather. Today I have my GoPro on a stick. Perhaps I could get a video looking down into the black hole.

It was not to be. They have somehow managed to fill the hole with dirt and rocks. I imagine they must have had to somehow put a plug in it and cover the plug with dirt. This was a pretty deep shaft and filling it up is out of the question. This trail gets quite a bit of traffic. I’m surprised they didn’t plug the shaft before now.

It was a great hike. We couldn’t have had better weather. The views were fantastic

Upper Diamond Lake

Posted on September 4, 2023 by dhill

This is my second trip up this valley. Back in early July, I came up here thinking I’d be able to get to the upper lake, but there was too much snow. Yes, it was silly of me to think I’d be able to hike above 11,000′ that early in the season. One nice thing about not getting to where I wanted to go is that it’s a built-in excuse to make another trip.

Friday, September 1

Rather than repeat myself, I’ll begin at Diamond Lake. (There is no shuttle to the trailhead, so I’ll note that on a Friday before a holiday weekend, there were still a few parking spots available at 7:30 am.)

There are more like four Diamond Lakes than two. In addition to Diamond Lake (10,960′) and Upper Diamond Lake (11,732′), there are two more. One is at 11,359′ and a much shallower one lies at 11,518′. I’m reasonably certain this second one never dries out, but it’s a close call.

When I’m hiking on a well-maintained trail, I generally don’t use trek poles. I carry them with me, strapped to my daypack. When I got to Diamond Lake, I broke out the poles only to get hit with glitch number one of the day. One of the nuts on the cams had come off. I couldn’t extend the pole to anything like a usable length. Oh well. No poles today. I hope that’s not going to be a problem.

To get to Upper Diamond Lake from Diamond Lake, continue to follow the trail that skirts the lake on its northern shore. I followed it all the way to the inlet stream. The trail climbs steeply for a while beside the burbling stream on a grassy slope. After a bit, I reached a T intersection. This surprised me a bit. On the hike back down, I didn’t even see this intersection and ended up at Diamond Lake a fair distance farther east than where I left the lake.

At one point, the trail seems to terminate right up against a giant rock. I saw that some hikers had gone around the rock to the right, so that’s what I did. Circling above the rock, I found the trail again. At the foot of the rock, there’s a “crack” there that is easily climbed. I just didn’t look closely enough.

Not long after this, we get to the southernmost of the lakes. The trail goes right down to the water. This is ideal if you’re ending your hike here, but not so ideal if you are continuing to the upper lake. This is more or less the end of the trail.

We’re above treeline by now, so the lack of a trail isn’t that big of a deal. From here on out, it’s fairly easy to see where you need to go, and there is enough hiking traffic that occasionally you come across some grass that’s clearly been walked through. I also spotted a cairn here and there, but these cairns are more of a confirmation that I’m going in the right direction than they signal a clear route.

The final approach to the upper lake is across a mix of narrow grassy slopes and boulders/talus. The lake is stark – a drop of water at the head of a narrow, rocky canyon. I didn’t stay there long. The wind, while not fierce, was steady.

It was only 10:30 (so, a bit less than a three-hour hike from the trailhead) and I wasn’t yet ready for lunch. I had a quick snack and headed back down, thinking I could find a scenic spot for lunch back at the lake where the trail ends. This was a much shorter stay at my destination than usual. It wasn’t that I was rushed for time, or that I didn’t find the lake very scenic. I just didn’t feel like sitting in the wind for very long, and, frankly, I enjoyed the hike between the lakes as much as I did the lake itself.

I took another break at the lower lake to slurp down a tasty Palisade peach.

I hadn’t seen another hiker since I first arrived at the lower lake. On the hike out, there was quite a bit of traffic on the trail. A short distance before reaching the junction with the Arapaho Pass trail, hikers told me to be on the lookout for a moose. I can’t tell you how often hikers tell me to be on the lookout for moose that I never see. This time, though, I spotted her. She was sitting comfortably in the shade only about twenty feet off the trail, chewing her cud.

Diamond Lake
Diamond Lake
Lake at 11,359′
They usually fly before I get the lens cap off
Late summer color
Lake at 11,5`8′
Upper Diamond Lake
Ptarmigan
She’s chewing her cud, counting the passing hikers
Oops

My second glitch of the day happened about ten minutes from the trailhead. I’m the first to admit I’m a bit of a clumsy oaf. Last week, I mentioned that I fell down four times. When I’m bushwhacking through dense forest, this doesn’t bother me much. It seems like tree limbs make a sport of grabbing my boots and pulling me off-balance. It goes with the territory.

On the trail, however, I expect to be able to keep on my feet. I don’t know what happened, but I took a mighty fall. I managed to break my fall with my hands, then sort of half-roll. I got a little bit of road rash on my left hand, which is annoying. But I landed on that hand pretty hard and it’s quite swollen and a bit discolored. I popped a couple of ibuprofen and continued back to the car. I have a couple of other bruises – my left upper arm just below the shoulder and my left leg, just above the knee.

This is the second time I’ve fallen on the trail. The first was about ten years ago. I scraped my arm pretty well and was covered in blood. I still carry about a six-inch scar from that one. Very little blood today. In addition to the sore, bruised, swollen left hand, I did a bit of damage to the GoPro. I carry it in the left front pocket of my pants. The selfie-stick/tripod it’s mounted on is a bit too long to fit in the pocket, so the camera sticks out. I landed right on top of the camera before my half-roll. No damage to the camera, but I did break the clear lens cap.

At least nobody witnessed my oafishness.

But for my clumsiness, it was an ideal day.

Spruce Canyon Addendum

In my write-up of last week’s backpacking trip, I somehow completely forgot to mention the toad.

As long as I’ve been hiking to Spruce Lake, they’ve had notices prominently posted that the wetlands on the east side of the lake are closed. That includes the shallow part of the lake where I saw the male and female moose sniffing each other and the marshy area from there to the trail. This area is closed to protect the breeding habitat for the boreal toad, which is classified as endangered by the state of Colorado.

I’ve never once seen nor heard any toads around here. I had no idea any toads or frogs lived in this part of the world, it being a few hundred feet short of 10,000′ above sea level and pretty much frozen solid a few months every year.

Well, this trip I finally spotted one. It wasn’t anywhere near the closure, but on one of the few stretches of bushwhacking we did on our way up to Loomis Lake when we lost the trail. The little guy (or gal) hopped right in front of me. I snapped a couple of photos, but he didn’t stand still for his portrait and none of them turned out. Still, it’s not every day one gets to see an endangered species in the wild.

Diamond Lake

Posted on July 5, 2023 by dhill

Mount Jasper rises to nearly thirteen thousand feet on the Continental Divide in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. One might think of it as being shaped somewhat like a starfish as it has five major ridges emanating from it. Two of these are situated on a nearly east-west axis. Between these two arms is a drainage that contains Diamond Lake, Upper Diamond Lake, and a couple of smaller unnamed ponds.

In addition to Mount Jasper, there is also Jasper Lake, an operating reservoir in the next drainage to the south of Diamond Lake.

There’s a well-traveled trail from the Fourth of July trailhead to Diamond Lake, a popular camping destination. There is no official trail from Diamond Lake to Upper Diamond Lake, but a little research yields at least two routes from Diamond Lake to Upper Diamond Lake. For maps, my go-to resource is Caltopo.com. They indicate a trail from the westernmost shore of Diamond Lake up an inlet, passing a pond before climbing to the north. ProTrails, on the other hand, suggests heading more or less due west from a meadow reached just prior to the trail actually reaching Diamond Lake.

Diamond Lake, like most of the other alpine lakes in Indian Peaks, sits fairly high up at a shade under 12,000′. Upper Diamond Lake is another 800′ or so higher. Because we have had such a wet spring, I expect the forest sections of trail below Diamond Lake might still be covered with snow. Certainly, no matter what route I might take to Upper Diamond Lake, I expect to find quite a bit of snow. At this time of year, even without higher-than-usual snowfall, microspikes would be required.

Monday, July 3

Both the Hessie trailhead and the Fourth of July trailhead are served by the same road, which becomes a dirt road just after passing through the town of Eldora. I’ve only been up this road a handful of times before today, and never on a weekend. Yes, today is a Monday, but with a holiday tomorrow, I expect it to be busier than a typical weekday. I was correct.

A sort of temporary entrance station was set up on the road at the entrance to Nederland High School. I arrived here at 7:45. They already had the shuttle bus for the Hessie trailhead operating. I was second in a line of four vehicles; we all were going to the Fourth of July trailhead at the end of the road. The fellow working the station got on the radio with a ranger at the trailhead to see how many of us could proceed. We were the last four cars allowed up the road. We had to wait a few minutes for the shuttle bus to return because the road is narrow.

It appears that sections of the road have been recently graded. Other sections are quite rough. Four-wheel drive isn’t required, but a fair amount of ground clearance is. Almost all the vehicles in the parking lot at the trailhead were SUVs and 4x4s, but there were a couple of compact cars.

When I arrived at the parking lot, I was afraid the ranger had miscounted. As I was approaching the lot, she was headed down the road in her truck. The spot I parked in was right up against a no-parking sign and I was concerned that overzealous enforcement might result in a ticket. One of the cars behind me took a similarly marginal spot across from me. I never did see where the fourth car parked.

The morning was beautiful, with clear deep blue skies, calm, with a temperature of just under 60 according to the car’s thermometer. Outstanding hiking weather.

The trail from the parking lot climbs about 600′ to the junction with the Diamond Lake trail. There is one pair of switchbacks in the middle of this climb, which traverses an increasingly steep slope. After the switchbacks, there are a few places where you get a nice view of the opposite side of the valley. Prominent in these views is the outlet stream from Diamond Lake, which cascades more than 400′. The sound of the falling water is constant accompaniment on this first mile or so of trail.

A bit more than a mile from the trailhead is a junction: to the left is Diamond Lake; to the right, the Fourth of July mine and trails to Arapaho Pass, Lake Dorothy, and South Arapaho Peak.

Heading left, the trail descends about three hundred feet before climbing the other side of the valley. There are a few stream crossings, with at least one of the bridges in need of some repair. As I expected, there is snow on the trail in places that don’t get much sunshine.

Just before reaching the lake, the trail levels off quite a bit and dumps the hiker on the east end of a large meadow. This early in the season, only the yellow flowers that flourish in marshy ground are in abundance. Perhaps as soon as a few days from now, flowers sporting all the colors in the rainbow will carpet the place.

Here, today, the trail is still covered in snow. A small rivulet is carving a little canyon through the snow. Snow melts from the bottom, and you can easily see that the trail crosses a snow bridge. It’s hard to judge just how thick the bridge is, but when I crossed it in the morning it was twelve or fifteen feet wide. Still, I was careful to not step where I thought it was thinnest. On the way back, a couple of hours later, the bridge was nearly gone, the snow is melting so quickly.

One possible route to Upper Diamond Lake heads across this meadow and up the slope that’s northwest of the lake. I didn’t see an obvious “easy” route – the meadow is more like a marsh right now, and the slope still held quite a bit of snow. It might be a good route in August or September, but I wasn’t going to head up that way.

When I got to the shore of Diamond Lake, I met a couple of hikers. I asked them if they had tried to get to the upper lake. I showed them my map while we discussed it. They weren’t familiar with the route suggested by ProTrails but did make an attempt to go the way that’s marked on the CalTopo map. They didn’t get too far: it was too snowy for them. Here, I decided to skip any attempt to reach the upper lake. The hike so far was a pleasant one, and there’s no reason not to come back when there’s less snow on the ground and the meadows aren’t marshes.

I walked along the northern shore of the lake. It’s grassy. Well, it’s grassy under the snow. I was a bit surprised at how much snow was still on the ground here, given that it’s in direct sunlight much of the day. It’s three, four, even five feet thick and stretches along the entire north shore of the lake. There are a few rocks along the shore that might make good picnic spots, but I preferred the somewhat larger rocks right along the trail.

Valley View
Failing Bridge
Marshy Meadow
Snow Carving
Snowberg!
Diamond Lake
Diamond Lake
A Little Friend

The summit of Mount Jasper isn’t visible from here, just one of its eastern ridges. Here, much closer to the Divide than the parking lot, it was naturally a bit breezier. No mirror-like lake surface, but not so windy as to make whitecaps.

I didn’t count the number of campsites. Diamond Lake isn’t quite as busy as Lost Lake, but it’s still quite popular. On the hike and at the lake, I never went more than a few minutes without encountering other hikers. That said, my picnic spot had the illusion of solitude. Other than the few people who passed my picnic spot on the trail, I only noticed a couple of hikers who were circumnavigating the lake.

On the hike out, I stopped for a break where a stream crosses the trail. There’s no bridge here, hikers just step from rock to rock. With the water running high this time of year, it can be a bit fraught. While I was eating my grapes, I watched two couples make the crossing. The first couple had an infant strapped to mom. They made it easily. The second was a bit more tentative. She went first, he stood by getting her crossing on video. She nearly tripped. I told her that if she had tripped, he’d have gotten it on video. “Good thing I didn’t trip!”

A bit later, I came across a group of five or six backpackers. They were headed up to Lake Dorothy. They’d never been there before. I described the lake and its environs and jokingly said I hoped none of them intended on sleeping in hammocks as the lake is surrounded by tundra.

It was a gorgeous day for a hike. The weather was outstanding. I was never bothered by mosquitoes. Although I didn’t reach my ultimate destination, I’m not disappointed. All in all, it was another beautiful day in the neighborhood.

A final note: I overcame one of last week‘s disappointments. It seemed odd (but not out of the ordinary) for a new version of a product to remove a feature of an older version. In this case, though, it was simply a change in the defaults. I can still take individual photos for my time-lapse, and edit them to my heart’s content.

timetable	Up	Down
Trailhead	8:37am	2:19 pm
IPW Boundary	8:48 am	2:00 pm
Diamond Lake trail jct	9:16 am	1:14 pm
Diamond Lake	10:14 am	11:48 am

More photos can be found here.

Lake Dorothy

Posted on August 19, 2022 by dhill

Wednesday, August 17

Lake Dorothy sits in a cirque at 12,067′ in the shadow of Mount Neva, a few feet of elevation above Arapaho Pass. It is the highest named lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. It covers about fourteen acres and is a hundred feet deep. There are native cutthroat trout in it, but I understand they are wily and elusive. The Continental Divide makes a turn from north/south to east/west here, and Lake Dorothy occupies the corner. To both the north and west, the divide is only a couple of hundred yards away.

You take the Arapaho Pass trail to reach it, and you’ll find that at the Fourth of July trailhead. Take Eldora Rd west from CO 119 in Nederland. At the west end of the town of Eldora, the pavement ends. From here, it’s five miles of pot-holed dirt road. We just had a couple of days of heavy rain, so all the holes were filled with water. It’s slow going. I was able to dodge most of the puddles but you just can’t miss them all. In the end, the parking lot was full of SUVs, pickups, and Subaru Outlanders. But one guy did get in there with his Ford Escort station wagon, so it’s doable without a huge amount of ground clearance.

The road to the Fourth of July trailhead is called Fourth of July road. And, of course, there’s the Fourth of July mine. The trailhead and road get their names from the mine, which is so named because C.C. Alvord discovered a silver lode there on the Fourth of July, 1872. More about that later.

The satellite image of the trailhead shows a full parking lot and cars parked along the road for quite some distance. I reckoned it wise to get there early and to have a Plan B in case I found no place to park. I left the house at six and satnav said I’d be there by 7:15. It is quite a crowded trailhead. I had two cars in front of me on the way in in the morning. The lot was about two-thirds full so I’d guess people started parking on the road by 7:45 at the latest.

When I left, the lot was full and cars lined the road for a considerable distance.

I put boots on the trail at 7:30. The car’s thermometer said the outside air temperature was 47. I kept the jacket in the pack figuring the exertion would keep me warm enough. Some of last night’s raindrops still clung to the pine needles. Given the amount of recent rain, the trail wasn’t terribly muddy and there weren’t that many puddles.

The trail climbs pretty steadily at about five hundred feet per mile. From the trailhead to the lake, it runs in a large arc, bending toward the west as it climbs the south-facing flank of Quarter to 5 Peak. It doesn’t meander at all and has only two short pairs of switchbacks. The first section of the hike is in dense forest. Shortly after the junction with the trail to Diamond Lake, the trail emerges from the trees onto a wide bench.

After crossing a couple of very wide, very shallow streams you reach the next trail junction and the Fourth of July mine. Take a right turn at the junction to climb a punishing twenty-one hundred feet in 2.2 miles to summit South Arapaho Peak. A shorter hike up that trail gets to a viewpoint of Arapaho Glacier. From this junction, the trail is visible on the mountainside above. Instead, I’m happy to keep the same bearing and continue following the arc’s not-too-strenuous climb to Arapaho Pass.

First, I poked around the mine for a quick minute. There are a few rusted machines and the remnants of a couple of timbers. There are some very small stakes ringed around a hole. The hole is the mine. Supposedly, it’s more than two hundred feet deep. There’s nothing covering the hole. Aside from two or three timbers, there is no sign of any structures here.

Once you pass the mine, you can see the trail almost all the way to the lake. From here to about a hundred yards from the lake you travel on an old roadbed. There are two different I’ve read about this road. It was built in 1900. One story is that they ran out of money when they reached the pass. The other says that two companies agreed to build the road, but the one on the west side didn’t build anything.

Today, standing at the pass, it’s striking that the old road was on an ideal route to the pass: an almost constant grade, no switchbacks, no having to dodge rock outcroppings, just a nearly straight shot. It’s also striking how the other side of the pass is a horrible place to try to put a road. This was before the automobile, and I don’t have any idea what the turning radius is for a team of oxen pulling a wagon. But you’re gonna need a bunch of switchbacks to go down that hill.

I imagine a light-duty road built for wagons more than a century ago would have been quite fragile and require a fair amount of maintenance to keep operational. It hasn’t been maintained in a century but there are still considerable stretches where it’s surprisingly intact. Long sections of retaining wall supporting the downslope side are still solid. Many places, of course, have fallen or eroded.

There’s another trail junction at the pass. One way heads eight hundred feet down the other side to Caribou Lake. The other goes to Lake Dorothy or to Caribou Pass (which is not on the Continental Divide). A short climb above the junction is rewarded with the first view of the lake.

It took me a few minutes short of two hours to make the hike. I was expecting to take more like two and a half, so I was pleased with myself. I found a nice spot along the water to sit and watch the world go by.

A few seconds after sitting down, I noticed I picked a spot only about fifteen yards from somebody’s backpack. I didn’t see who belonged to it. There was a hiker some distance away from me who was just leaving and I didn’t see anybody else. Then I started hearing voices and figured the pack’s owner and a friend were further along the shore, around a slight bend.

I couldn’t pinpoint the voices. Instead of being out of sight on my shore, it started sounding like perhaps they were on the opposite shore. I scanned the whole place but didn’t see anybody. After a bit, I heard a rock falling somewhere. It’s not uncommon. This one I thought sounded like it was the result of a footstep, but I couldn’t tell you why. A few minutes later, there was a second one.

Eventually, I spotted them. There were two: a man and a woman, by the sound of their voices. They were on the opposite side of the lake, but not on the shore. They were at the very top of the spine on the north ridge of Mount Neva, five hundred feet above the lake. I spotted the white helmet before I saw the orange one.

The mountain’s spine there resembles a flat W. I first spotted them when they reached the bottom of the right-hand part. They were going north to south, or right to left. They went right along the top – they were in silhouette quite often. The things people do. I could never do that. I’d be petrified, immobile. But the world would be a boring place if we all liked the same things.

On the old road
Mount Neva
Insignificance
Mountaineers and Moonset
South shore view
Windbreak

I enjoyed my surroundings for an hour and a quarter before packing up and heading back down the hill. It was too early for lunch but I figured by the time I got back down to the mine I’d be ready. There was a nice open view there. C.C. Alvord may have picked a dud of a place for a mine, but he picked a place with a fantastic view. Oh, and I finally found the guy who belonged to the backpack. He was fishing quietly on the south shore.

So, about the mine…

In researching it, I was a bit confused at first. I found one reference that said it was a copper mine, another said it was silver and lead, and a third said gold. I had just assumed that it was gold. In the end, it was all of the above. Sort of.

It started with silver. The Rocky Mountain News said it was an outcropping of an enormous silver ledge that would keep a hundred thousand men mining for generations. The News was a bit off. Next to the deep shaft, Alvord built a bunkhouse for the crew, a blacksmith shop, and a stable for the horse that spent its days powering the mine’s hoist. I didn’t see anywhere how big the crew was, but I suspect it was maybe 99,990 short of a hundred thousand.

Over a five-year period, the mine did okay. Alvord expanded the operation with a tunnel downslope from the shaft (which I didn’t look for) and added another blacksmith shop there. But the mine was very close to a stream, and water constantly seeped into it. The whole operation was shut down in 1880. In addition to the streams, I’m sure there are many springs. There’s a small spring right on the trail a bit before reaching the ledge the mine sits on.

Twenty years later, the mine was promoted as being a huge copper source, the biggest in the region. The promoters put together a glossy 32-page brochure and sold 3 million shares at a dollar apiece. I can’t help but wonder if somebody from the News helped out with the brochure. When extending the tunnel they somehow managed to make a U-turn, blasting out of the mountain not far from where they started. Three million dollars was a lot of money in 1900, and I’d be amazed if they spent anywhere near that in their efforts.

Somebody got rich, and somebody got the shaft.