It was dark at 4:00am, but the moon was out and I could see just the hint of light on the horizon as I pulled on a sweatshirt and began folding up the tent. Camped at just under 7,400 feet, I'd gotten my first good night of sleep in three days, banking nearly ten hours of shut-eye as a cool Sierra breeze streamed down the canyon overnight. I'd need every minute of that recharge; the day was going to be a doozy.
Not that I ever really stood any chance of keeping up with Matt @theesotericone.
By 4:17am, I started up the Tacoma and moved a few hundred feet from my camp site to the parking lot at the Pine Creek trailhead. Matt was set to arrive at 5:00am, so I took the opportunity to transfer some fuel from the jerry cans, and get my pack stocked with everything I'd need for the day.
There aren't many people who have the same penchant for type 2 fun that I do, mostly because type 2 fun is a polite name for voluntarily ruining your own day. I'm not sure why exactly - who doesn't enjoy suffering for the sake of suffering - but I always try to be careful when proposing hikes, in the hopes that I'll continue to have hiking companions into the future.
Even so, I've been thoroughly impressed by the treks I've seen out of Matt. Every time he posts a few photos and a description of the fabulous places he ventures in the high Sierra, I find myself wanting to duplicate the experience for myself. In fact, one of his trips was the inspiration for my very long trek to Morgan Pass, and I don't recall - but wouldn't doubt - if he inspired my climb to the Tungstar Mine.
And so, when we each discovered - a bit by accident, as a result of reading between the lines on each other's reports - that we both wanted to make a go at following a massive old aerial tramway more than 6,500 feet into the Sierra, I was super excited. Immediately, we started making plans for our first meet-up, eventually coming to the conclusion that a late fall attempt - to enjoy some of the Sierra's fantastic fall colors - would probably be the time that worked best for both of us.
But as often happens in the life of people who like to get out and explore, things just seemed to fall into place for a spring trip. There'd still be snow - perhaps even enough to turn us around - but it seems we are both gluttons for punishment, so what's a little white stuff on the trail?
Matt was right on time, and after a quick round of hellos, we each spent a few minutes doing our final packing and checking to make sure we had everything we needed for this insane adventure. As we came back together a few minutes later, it was interesting to see the differences in our setups. Matt preferred to carry all of his weight on his shoulders, while I make every effort to keep everything I carried on my hips.
And then, half an hour before sunrise, we started up the trail.
There is no better way to describe this trail than "up." Between the Gable Lakes trailhead and the summit of Mt. Tom, one must climb over 6,400 feet - more than a mile - over the course of approximately 4.2 miles of hiking. And, while the first two miles follow the well-defined Gable Lakes trail, the last two miles consist of only the suggestion of an old miner's trail that once followed the route of an old aerial tramway. Today, large segments are gone, so - in addition to being steep - most of the trek is a trailless struggle up a literal mountain of loose scree. It is insanity, pure and simple.
In life, I've found that my insanity and a tolerance for suffering are rarely challenged. With Matt, I could immediately tell that I'd met my match. In fact, exactly one week earlier, I'd received a text from him:
Turns out that he'd mixed up the dates of our planned rendezvous, and rather than go home when I wasn't there, he decided to do the hike solo. And now, he was doing it again, just so we could do it together! What a badass.
Given that he'd already seen everything, he suggested that I lead the way up the trail. I suspect this was also a way to ensure that he didn't leave me in the dust, so I warned him that I was not the fastest hiker, but that I generally kept a reasonably consistent pace. And, within half an hour, we started to see evidence of the aerial tramway that got me interested in this hike to begin with.
We ticked off the first mile - and 1,070 feet of elevation - in what seemed like no time at all. This was in large part due to an easy-flowing conversation as Matt and I got to know a bit more about each other. I think Matt also enjoyed watching my reaction as I'd round a bend and catch sight of one amazing view after another.
Across the creek - several hundred feet below us at this point - stood the tram towers of a second aerial tramway. Because who doesn't see an impossible aerial tramway leading up a nearly vertical mountain and think, "That doesn't look like it was too much work, I'm going to build another."
By 6:30am, we'd left the relative ease of the Gable Lakes trail. One of our first challenges was crossing Gable Creek, a continuous ribbon of rapids plunging towards lower elevations. Tossing our shoes across - as much to force ourselves to brave the 33°F water as to keep our shoes dry - we each braced ourselves with hiking poles and walking sticks as our quickly-numb feet felt out the first few steps.
After crossing the creek the real insanity began. I'd traced what I could find of the old miner's trail on satellite imagery, but as is so often the case, the situation on the ground told an entirely different story. Soon, we were picking our way up in whatever way we could.
Our progress slowed as quickly as our heart rates rose. Every step up the scree took us a foot higher. Every other step, the loose hillside would give way, erasing six inches of gain. Still, we were beginning to come into the most interesting - at least for me - segment of the hike.
When I'd visited the Tungstar Mine from the Horton Lakes trailhead, I'd marveled at the endless view when I reached the old workings. Beginning a few hundred feet below, a series of aerial tram towers seemed to cling to the hillside. One after the other were strung out for thousands of feet. Several had crumbled in the intervening years, but we were coming up on a series that still stood tall, a testament to the quality of the work done by the old miners.
When Birkett Sherwin prospected lower Gable Creek in 1916, he stopped short of finding the rich outcrops that would be the basis for Pine Creek's second largest tungsten producer. The deposit remained undiscovered until 1937 when Yugoslav immigrant Bill Wasso and his partner Gerard Crawford, found scheelite-bearing rock above timberline on the western, windswept slope of Mt. Tom.
At 12,000 feet, the mine site proved inhospitable at times with snow drifts of 60 to 100 feet reported, along with high winds and avalanches. A platform was dug out of the talus slope and camp buildings erected to accommodate up to 25 men. Cost precluded a road, so a winding seven-mile trail was built from Gable Creek to the mine.
Initially, mining was done by open cuts, but underground glory holing soon followed, permitting year-round production. When one of the stopes caved, square-set timbering methods were used to hold up the rock. Hand-steel methods were used for drilling and blasting, and Tungstar was probably the last large mine in the district where these slow labor-intensive methods were practiced. Eventually, air compressors and rock drills were packed up the mountain to speed production.
It became apparent to the developers that an aerial tramway was the only feasible method for getting the ore down off Mount Tom and to the nearest road. The road was located in Pine Creek Canyon, 4,500 vertical feet lower and 2.5 miles away. In 1939 the R.N. Riblet Tramway Company designed and built a system over terrain that was a challenge to the most intrepid of engineers.
There was some question as to the location of the upper tramway house. Should it be placed at the existing mining level, or further downslope at the portal of a yet-to-be-driven tunnel that would tap the lower portions of the ore body? In the end, a temporary system was designed, utilizing a low-cost jigback tramway. It would carry ore to a transfer bin 3,200 feet downslope from the lowest working level at the time. The ore would then be transferred to a 22-bucket continuous tramway for the last 10,500 foot run to the mill.
By this point, we were looking back down as much as we were looking up. We'd gained another thousand feet of elevation and the views of the valleys were really coming into their own.
We pushed on. Progress was slow as we scoped routes through scree and over patches of snow and ice that reached down the hillside, threatening to send us sliding with one false step. Matt tackled these snowy sections with an ease that I could only admire as I stopped at each crossing to pull on the micro-spikes that I hoped would carry me across.
But we were making progress. We'd reached the next series of towers!
Resting for what our lungs and legs assured us was the not enough-eth time, we'd climbed to 11,002 feet, and the trees - once plentiful on the hillside - were thinning dramatically. Above us, only a few more towers stood between us and the workings of Tungstar Mine. Plus a couple of ridges, several snowbanks, and a thousand feet of elevation.
It was 10:12am; time for lunch!
Like the turkey I am, I'd decided that bringing a Turkey Tom sandwich from Jimmy John's was the perfect way to pay tribute to this trip up a mountain of the same name. Matt on the other hand - ever the professional hiker - pulled out pouches of what I can only describe as pure energy. Each one was a fraction of the size of my sandwich, and yet they were packed with more nutrients and calories than I'd consume all week.
As we ate, we discussed our options. We'd been making steady progress - it was only 10:30am and we had less than 2,000 feet to reach the summit - but I'd argue that there are few hikes in the Sierra more intimidating than climbing the back side of Mt. Tom.
Matt was up for anything. We could keep going to the summit. We could plateau at the mine and turn the hike into a loop via the Gable Lakes trail. Or we could head back the way we'd come. After all, he had nothing to prove - he'd done this solo, in the snow, only a few days earlier!
It was clear to me that the summit of Mt. Tom was not in the cards. The up part of the equation wasn't an issue, but the higher we got, the broader and steeper the icefields became. And, with elevation came a distinct lack of vegetation to arrest our descent should something go wrong on those slippery surfaces. Plus, I've had the hike to Gable Lakes on my "want to do" list for just as long as this trek up the aerial tramway, so I offered my preference for a change of plans.
We made it another 500 feet, gaining another ridge, before we realized that even getting to the mine - where we could cut across a hanging valley to Upper Gable Lake - was going to require an icefield traverse that neither of us was comfortable with. To bypass it would mean climbing to a ridge 1,000 feet higher, then hoping that the descent along its edge was snow-free and passable. Matt was still game, but I was ready to call it a day. Or at least, the apex of our day; there was still a long way down!
We dropped the first 500 feet much more quickly than we'd ascended, the scree sliding down beneath our feet as sand might on the side of a dune. Still 300 feet above a small saddle, Matt mentioned that he'd seen a smaller tram tower nestled into its base, and wondered if we should go take a look. Doing so would commit us to an alternate route down - should we find one that was suitable - or mean climbing back to our original route if we found ourselves cliffed out.
Obviously, there was no real choice at all, and soon we were headed toward the saddle.
Reaching the saddle, a faint trail continued along the ridge, tempting us further and further from our known route down. My GPS showed an old trail that ended a couple hundred feet lower at a point, so we pushed on.
Reaching the point, we had a quick consult to determine our next move. We could head back up - now quite the climb - or continue down along the rocky ridge, in the hopes that it would deliver us all the way to the Gable Lakes trail.
"I've only ever been screwed twice in the Sierra," Said Matt, "Every other time, I've found a way through."
That was good enough for me, and soon we were gingerly picking our way along a razor's-edge ridgeline as it seemed to drop out from under us.
At another small saddle, part of the hillside had been carved away. Here, evidence of another old mine camp. The cabin - a jumble of boards - held several little treasures, and we admired them before turning to a much more interesting find.
After poking through the remains of the old cabin, we turned to the remains of the upper terminal of the continuous lower tramway. Why the miners would have come up with a plan to build two distinct tramways - to service the same mine - is beyond me. Perhaps hefting 40,000 feet of 1-inch steel cable was just too much for them. Better to lift "only" 20,000 feet at a time!
From the mine camp, we had three options, all of which entailed plunging down one of the sides of the ridge we'd been following. To our north, we'd find ourselves in a scree field that narrowed to a small chute. It would, certainly, lead us back the way we needed to go, but in doing so would deliver us to the river we'd crossed earlier in the day, now a raging torrent as 80°F temperatures melted the remaining snow on the hillsides. To the south, we'd descend steeply into a rocky drainage so steep that it wasn't obvious we'd be able to downclimb the falls that surely existed between our elevation and the Gable Lakes trail. Lastly, we could continue to follow the razor's edge, in hopes that it would allow us access to a lower section of the rocky drainage, beyond the most technical terrain.
We chose the latter.
At this point, we were dropping elevation even faster than we'd gained it on our way up, with Matt scouting ahead a few hundred feet to ensure that we'd be able to continue at least another couple hundred feet beyond his position. I would then descend, incredulous that he continually found a route down, only to have the next segment of our descent seem even more difficult.
Three hundred feet above the base of the ridge, our straight-down tactic became infeasible. Looking over each edge, Matt spotted a route that - while even steeper than we'd endured so far - seemed like it would work. To him.
"The easy way"
Pointing out the route to me, he described traversing along an edge of rock with a 50-foot drop, eventually making our way to a small flat area with a solitary tree. From there, it was "only" a few 5-foot tall ledges to downclimb, depositing us in a narrow drainage, before crawling under a chockstone and into a long field of scree that led down to the river. "The easy way," he said. My chuckling response - which I still stand by - was, "For you, maybe."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, everything worked out just as Matt predicted, and before long, we were once again working our way higher along the creek, in search of a spot where we could safely cross before joining up with the Gable Lakes trail for the remainder of our descent.
We covered the two miles of trail back to our vehicles with relative ease. Conversation - after a day of hiking together - continued to flow easily, each of us - I hope - enjoying the company of the other. It'd been a long day - some 12 hours on the trail - which sounds bad until you remember we'd both mentally signed up for something considerably stupider.
Perhaps there's a point at which insanity becomes badassery. If there is, a few more hikes with Matt are sure to show me the way.
The Whole Story
