hairy_apple
Adventurer
The first time I went to Meadow lake, I found it by mistake. I was 16 driving through the woods with my friends in my FJ40. We were just camping, and wheeling and having a good time. By the time we reached Meadow Lake, we were on fumes. We split the 5 gallons of fuel I brought for myself between the 3 of us and crossed our fingers we'd all make it to Truckee.
Every other time I've been there, it's always on the way out from driving all day. I've never had the time to just look around and explore the area. I've always known there was a sizable town there, and a lot of mines, but I've never had the chance to actually go explore them.
We finally set out on a trip this summer to do just that. The whole reason for going would just be to see what cool stuff we could find from the mines and town site.
Took about 3 hours from Grass Valley, through Truckee and up 89, finally hit the turn off and drove in another 40 minutes or so on dirt roads. Most of which were nice gravel roads. I've had driven my car down to the lake actually...
Once we got down to the lake, we were ready for lunch. So we just hung out a bit and enjoyed being in the mountains and ate lunch at the lake before getting moving. Wow the lake was low!
Starting down the trail, we quickly found tailings and a lot of evidence of mines. The more we looked, the more we found. There were hundreds if not thousands of holes in the ground just outside the lake. We found some cool rocks, and lots of little chunks of quartz. I can't imagine the amount of work it took to extract gold up here. We could feel the elevation.. we were huffing and puffing just hiking around.. I can't imagine hammering rocks all day up there.
We continued down the trail only to find more and more piles of broken rocks. The areas were the mines are was very clear, the sharp red tailings were a stark contrast to the rounded white granite, smoothed by millions of years of weather. We kept pulling over to see if there was anything more exciting then the last pile of broken rocks. Sadly, most of the mines have long collapsed or been filled in. They were just depressions with tailings around them.
We also kept finding a lot of old pipes laying around.
We then found this large mine. It was marked on the map actually, as Excelsior mine... which was the original name of the town.
Dynamite blast? Sure looks that way.
My dog seems to be smarter then us... she was standing at the top wimpering at us the whole time. What are you guys thinking? Why would you go INTO a hole in the ground.
At this point we actually turned back and took a loop back around to Meadow lake. This is the top of Fordyce and we didn't have time to go down and go wheeling, we wanted to see what else we could find.
We were not disappointed. We found the coolest stuff a few minutes later.
A lot of wooden remains. There was a ton of old timber and bolts. Some larger iron stuff mixed in that was broken. We guessed that maybe it was a stamp mill or headstock for the large mine we found near by. The tailings here were a lot more crushed making me think it was a stamp mill. We also found a ton of old cans.. although I kind of doubt they were 1880s... they were old and a TON of them. We also found the only mine that wasn't totally collapsed. It was close, and it was totally flooded, but if it wasn't flooded and you were dumb enough, you could have crawled into it. It was actually a little creepy.
We hiked up to the top of the hill and just sat around for a while and enjoyed the awesome day. My dog scared the out of me because the otherwise smart dog thought it would be a good idea to walk out onto a log over hanging a pretty far drop. You can't really see it in the picture, but it would have killed her if she fell. I have no idea what got into her.. but she just walked out onto it and out to the end of it and stood there like she owned the forest and that was her throne.
On our way back out, we found the remains of another homestead. It made me sad to see it had collapsed, the last time I had found it, it was still mostly up. That was 6 years ago.. and it's old and snow is heavy, but it still made me sad to see it down.
At that point we made our way back out to Meadow Lake and it was getting late, so we headed home. Driving home over Donner Summit at 9PM in an FJ40 is always pretty amazing too. You really feel so much more connected to the world with no top and no doors. Looking up and seeing stars driving is incredible.
In retrospect, I wish we had planned to camp that night. It was Labor Day weekend and I figured that Meadow Lake would be packed since it's the end point for Fordyce, but it wasn't too bad and there were a ton of places to camp away from people still. Oh well.. we'll have to go back soon. Being in the mountains, at higher elevation like that just puts me at peace. I totally forget about everything that's been stressing me out and just makes me happy. I can't explain it other then that, it just makes me happy.
Every other time I've been there, it's always on the way out from driving all day. I've never had the time to just look around and explore the area. I've always known there was a sizable town there, and a lot of mines, but I've never had the chance to actually go explore them.
We finally set out on a trip this summer to do just that. The whole reason for going would just be to see what cool stuff we could find from the mines and town site.
Took about 3 hours from Grass Valley, through Truckee and up 89, finally hit the turn off and drove in another 40 minutes or so on dirt roads. Most of which were nice gravel roads. I've had driven my car down to the lake actually...
Once we got down to the lake, we were ready for lunch. So we just hung out a bit and enjoyed being in the mountains and ate lunch at the lake before getting moving. Wow the lake was low!
Starting down the trail, we quickly found tailings and a lot of evidence of mines. The more we looked, the more we found. There were hundreds if not thousands of holes in the ground just outside the lake. We found some cool rocks, and lots of little chunks of quartz. I can't imagine the amount of work it took to extract gold up here. We could feel the elevation.. we were huffing and puffing just hiking around.. I can't imagine hammering rocks all day up there.
We continued down the trail only to find more and more piles of broken rocks. The areas were the mines are was very clear, the sharp red tailings were a stark contrast to the rounded white granite, smoothed by millions of years of weather. We kept pulling over to see if there was anything more exciting then the last pile of broken rocks. Sadly, most of the mines have long collapsed or been filled in. They were just depressions with tailings around them.
We also kept finding a lot of old pipes laying around.
We then found this large mine. It was marked on the map actually, as Excelsior mine... which was the original name of the town.
Dynamite blast? Sure looks that way.
My dog seems to be smarter then us... she was standing at the top wimpering at us the whole time. What are you guys thinking? Why would you go INTO a hole in the ground.
At this point we actually turned back and took a loop back around to Meadow lake. This is the top of Fordyce and we didn't have time to go down and go wheeling, we wanted to see what else we could find.
We were not disappointed. We found the coolest stuff a few minutes later.
A lot of wooden remains. There was a ton of old timber and bolts. Some larger iron stuff mixed in that was broken. We guessed that maybe it was a stamp mill or headstock for the large mine we found near by. The tailings here were a lot more crushed making me think it was a stamp mill. We also found a ton of old cans.. although I kind of doubt they were 1880s... they were old and a TON of them. We also found the only mine that wasn't totally collapsed. It was close, and it was totally flooded, but if it wasn't flooded and you were dumb enough, you could have crawled into it. It was actually a little creepy.
We hiked up to the top of the hill and just sat around for a while and enjoyed the awesome day. My dog scared the out of me because the otherwise smart dog thought it would be a good idea to walk out onto a log over hanging a pretty far drop. You can't really see it in the picture, but it would have killed her if she fell. I have no idea what got into her.. but she just walked out onto it and out to the end of it and stood there like she owned the forest and that was her throne.
On our way back out, we found the remains of another homestead. It made me sad to see it had collapsed, the last time I had found it, it was still mostly up. That was 6 years ago.. and it's old and snow is heavy, but it still made me sad to see it down.
At that point we made our way back out to Meadow Lake and it was getting late, so we headed home. Driving home over Donner Summit at 9PM in an FJ40 is always pretty amazing too. You really feel so much more connected to the world with no top and no doors. Looking up and seeing stars driving is incredible.
In retrospect, I wish we had planned to camp that night. It was Labor Day weekend and I figured that Meadow Lake would be packed since it's the end point for Fordyce, but it wasn't too bad and there were a ton of places to camp away from people still. Oh well.. we'll have to go back soon. Being in the mountains, at higher elevation like that just puts me at peace. I totally forget about everything that's been stressing me out and just makes me happy. I can't explain it other then that, it just makes me happy.
