On our way to the Mule Tail Mine after hiking Upper Marble Canyon.
Pastel skies - and Telescope Peak in the distance - as we searched for somewhere level.
After a bit of a struggle to find a reasonably flat spot along the Mule Tail Mine road where we could set up camp, it was pitch dark when we climbed into the tent a little after 6:15pm. We were asleep 45 minutes later, well before a reasonable bedtime.
It was also windier this evening than it'd been on the previous three that we'd been in Death Valley National Park. Rather than calming as we dozed, the winds picked up over the next few hours, making for a noisy night in the tent, and a chilly bathroom break when I woke up at midnight.
The following morning...
It was still blowing when my alarm sounded the next morning, a reminder of how lucky we'd been for most of the trip. Still, having banked 12-hours of horizontal time, we were reasonably well rested and ready to get an early start on our final day.
Good morning sun.
As always, I'd over-scheduled our limited daylight hours. This time, my lame excuse was a five-hour drive back to Las Vegas - to catch an evening flight home - while still hoping to explore two mines and a hike, before our mandatory noontime departure!
Our first objective - the Mule Tail Mine - wasn't far from "home."
This small talc mine (with a little tungsten and gold) is believed to be the site of Shorty Harris' original strike that started this Goldbelt mining district. The mine has four tunnels, some still timbered, a few prospects, a mine car, and a decrepit ore chute.
There seemed to be plenty to poke around.
Obviously, I was most interested in the "mine car," which I've always referred to as an ore cart. Whatever the terminology, I hoped to push it along some track, grinning from ear-to-ear the entire time. Wishful thinking, it would turn out.
The ore chute has certainly seen better days.
Technically, I suppose this is an ore cart. But with no wheels, and lying on its side...more like a lawn ornament. (left) | An old drill bit. (right)
There were several adits at the old Mule Tail, but being built into veins of talc - a substance that's generally known to be a powder - the entrances have all mostly collapsed. I say mostly because one can worm their way into a couple of them, which meant that I did and @mrs.turbodb called me crazy.
Only one adit really had anything of interest - a bit of rail, an old jug of clean-looking water, and a cozy nest - of which I snapped a few photos before wandering back out into the daylight.
This tunnel was about a hundred feet deep. At least, that's where the timbering stopped and the ceiling was at the same level as the floor.
Liquid life.
Down-lined retreat.
By 8:00am we were wrapping up our Mule Tail Mine visit and headed back toward the road home. We had a couple more stops - assuming there was time - to find a hidden cave, and explore one more talc mine in the Goldbelt district: the Keeler Mine.
A sunny morning as we approached Sand Flat.
As we rolled along one of the most remote roads we've driven in Death Valley National Park, I didn't really think either of these locations would present any trouble. The Keeler Mine was clearly visible on satellite imagery, and I'd - remarkably - gotten GPS coordinates for the cave from a trip report posted in 2018.
Silly me. Nothing is ever that easy, is it?
Having arrived at the trailhead - or at least, the spot where we were going to start hiking, since there was no trail - we shed our sweatshirts, I grabbed the camera, and we set off across the desert.
Almost immediately, we were cold. The previous nights' wind must have ushered in cooler temperatures, because even though it was bright and sunny, every bit of shady ground was still covered in frost. To warm up, we simultaneously picked up the pace and willed the sun higher into the blue sea above.
Sentry.
Big bands.
One of the downsides with all the research I do is that, once I find something cool, I record as much information as I can and then become quickly distracted by the next cool location I find-and-want-to-visit. And, since much of that research happens months - or even years - before I actually get out to visit that place, my feeble old mind has little idea of what I'm looking for once I'm there.
This was the case on our last trip - Back to the Blacks - and was once again the case as we neared the coordinates I'd marked for this location. Knowing that I'd found actual coordinates for this one, I wasn't too worried, and I mentioned to my fellow hiker that I was pretty sure we should be looking for pictographs, but that we could be looking for petroglyphs when we got there.
Naturally, I brought no pictures or any of the other research I’d found.
When visiting rock art and ruin sites, be respectful.
This is most easily done by following the Leave No Trace principles; leaving the place exactly as you found it and taking with you only photographs and memories. In case that is not clear enough for some reason, here are examples of respectful behaviors:
The problem was, we showed up at the coordinates and were greeted by ground that'd clearly been used as some sort of camp - likely by miners and Native Americans before that - but there was no rock art to be seen.
This neat little slot canyon was cool, but it was not the rock (art) we were looking for.
Thus began a somewhat nerve-wracking and frantic search. Splitting up to cover more ground, I began climbing into the rocky outcroppings on the hillsides - several of which looked as though they might have been shelters - as @mrs.turbodb walked along the base of the formations, looking for etchings and paintings that were "at ground level."
I must have covered an additional two miles of terrain as I zig-zagged my way across the hillside, eventually working my way to a ridge delineating our valley from the next. Here and there, a few shelters had signs of habitation - lithic scatter, smoke residue - but there was no artwork. Plus, the rock seemed all wrong. With the exception of the last grouping of boulders, none of it was covered in dark desert patina; rather, it was a checkerboard of white and dark, almost marble-like surface.
Knowing that we didn't have all day - literally - I hustled my way down from the ridge, hoping that @mrs.turbodb had fared better. In fact, she had!
Meeting up nearly half a mile from the location I'd marked, she mentioned that she'd seen a few faint, abstract petroglyphs along the base of the rocks, and with nothing to report from my end, I was quick to follow her lead.
Snake glyph.
Seeing what she'd found, I was reasonably confident that I wouldn't have marked this site for that alone, but it was still that she found something, which was more than I could say for myself.
As we began walking back toward the trailhead - along the base of the boulders - we kept an eye out for more, and a few minutes later, I glanced into a hidden cave to find the jackpot. I knew immediately that this was what I'd been hoping to find.
Back wall.
Lines.
Curved comb.
Several angles on the ceiling.
A humanoid, perhaps?
I have to say, finding that hidden cave really raised our spirits. It's funny how not finding what we were looking for - at some random point I'd found on the web - seemed like such a downer. It was, I realized part of the trouble with planning what we would see and how long it would take to see it. With wanting to know what to expect, rather than expecting nothing and being thrilled by a discovery. Just another lesson - that I probably won't learn - in slowing down.
Flush with our success, we continued to poke around the nearby rockery with renewed enthusiasm. There were a couple more petroglyphs that had been spotted on the initial pass, and a few more uncovered with a second pair of eyes.
Water glyph.
Atlatls.
Abstract panel.
One of the only figures we found.
I really liked this star that was close to the ground.
This water glyph was the most defined of them all.
Miraculously, I'd allotted two hours for this little excursion, and by the time we reached the Tacoma - now much warmer, our return trip uphill and into the sun - we were still six minutes ahead of schedule.
Yep, I'd already forgotten my lesson on slowing down. It was time to get ourselves over to the Keeler Talc Mine!
The road to the Keeler Mine was good until it wasn't.
The Ubehebe and Keeler mines, located in the range of hills immediately east of Ulida Flat, and the Quackenbush Mine, two miles further east and about one mile north of Goldbelt Spring, are of fairly recent vintage, all three having been worked for steatite-grade talc on a small scale during World War II. In 1945 one James O. Greenan of Reno, Nevada, secured an option from Roscoe Wright of Goldfield on four talc claims in the Ubehebe area in which recent tests had determined the presence of commercial quantities of high-grade talc that could be used in the production of cosmetics and of steatite grade suitable for high-frequency radio electrical insulators.
These deposits in the northern Panamint Range and in the Inyo Mountains to the west have been the source of practically all the California-produced steatite- and pharmaceutical-grade talc. Smaller in extent than the talc deposits in the southern end of the monument in Warm Spring Canyon and the Ibex Hilts, the largest bodies in this northern part have been measured at about 500 by 50 feet. By the late 1960s most of the bodies had been mined out or were considered unworthy of further investigation. The extent of reserves in these properties is unknown, but they are believed to be substantial. Their isolation, however, impedes any large-scale systematic development, and the long haul to market is economically infeasible. Most recent activity has been of the weekend sort.
The reason I'd wanted to see the Keeler mine was twofold. First, we'd explored many of the other mines in the area on a previous trip, but had, somehow - likely due to being in a rush - missed the Keeler. Second, I'd seen what I thought was a headframe when photographed from those flying cameras circling the earth, and it's always fun to come upon a still-standing headframe at one of these old workings!
Steeply inclined.
Still spins easily.
After admiring the headframe - and deciphering how it once pulled and dumped ore from the inclined shaft below - it was on to inspect a couple of nearby adits.
The Keeler-White Horse Talc #1, White Horse #2, and White Horse Talc #3-#4 unpatented lode claims were located in 1943 by Alexander "Shorty" Borden, Bev Hunter, Roy Hunter, and Hellen Kraft; they are presently [as of 1981] owned by Victor Materials Company of Victorville, California, and Rowena R. and Charles A. Munns of Brigham City, Utah.
The 65-foot-deep vertical shaft on the property was dug in 1967 by Grantham Mines Company employees, who soon ceased work because of the unavailability of milling-grade ore.
Nearly too narrow to squeeze through.
Current resident.
"Totally safe" access to the vertical shaft.
Neither of the adits had much of interest - one ending abruptly at the vertical shaft, the other after burrowing 100 feet into the hillside - and knowing that we had a long drive ahead of us, we spent only a few minutes tentatively traipsing our way through the crumbling talc around us. How these adits haven't fully collapsed already is beyond me!
Talc - with the feeling of soap - is like no other rock I've ever touched. It is a joy to run your fingers across it, and something I wholeheartedly recommend should one have the opportunity!
Let's get out of here.
The last of our investigations complete, we pointed the Tacoma back toward Hunter Mountain and South Pass; it was 11:42am, the perfect time to head toward home.
Hunter Mountain Road won't be passable much longer.
Definitely a tad chilly this morning at elevation.
South Pass view of Panamint Dunes and a snow-dusted Telescope Peak.
But for those few sights we encountered, the trip back to Las Vegas was entirely uneventful. We aired up upon reaching pavement - at the intersection of Saline Valley Road and CA-190 - and emptied a couple jerry cans of Pahrump-sourced fuel into the tank while downing a bit of lunch ourselves. And it was dark - nearly 5:30pm - when we buttoned up and put away the Tacoma, ready for the next adventure.
The Whole Story
