Sunset Mine / Snowshoe Outing

So last weekend we tried to organize a large snowshoeing expedition. Get out, snowshoe to an old mine or at least something interesting, get some winter air, exercise, etc. Well, that all kind of fell apart. The recent heavy rain and low snowpack didn't help, and schedules were conflicted.

Nevertheless Meredith, Al and I set out for a two-part hike off Highway 2. The first stop would be the Sunset Mine site for some mine exploration. The second would be up closer to Stevens Pass to try out new equipment: boots, snowshoes, rain pants, hats, etc.

Fortunately it was a lovely day, the rain and wind had passed.

The Sunset mine is a very easy day trip that pretty much anyone could do and it's actually pretty popular in the summer. The Trout Creek area was once one of the most active spots in the Cascades and the hills are peppered with sites. The Sunset lode was discovered here in 1897. Mining began in 1902 and continued on and off until 1946. The mine was predominantly a copper mine. Total production was reported at 263,500 tons of ore, resulting in 1,500 ounces of gold, 156,000 ounces of silver, and 12,912,000 pounds of copper. The workings consist of five levels and over 12,000 feet of tunnels. The mine is now in a state of collapse. The lower levels are flooded. Most of the adits have collapsed. In the 1930's some of the main stopes collapsed, resulting in some spectacular chasms. (Source: Discovering Washington's Historical Mines, Vol. 1 The West Central Cascade Mountains, Ina Chang, Ed., 1997. 127-134.)

The mine site is off the Index-Galena Road, off of Highway 2. The Index-Galena road washed out a couple years back, so it is closed to traffic after a few miles. At that junction, on the right, is a gravel road that goes up into the mountains. This is Trout Creek road, and we 4-wheeled it up about 1 3/4 miles till the road was flooded and blocked, purposely, by boulders. There's a parking area here at the remaining foundations of the old mill site. Apparently the road has been greatly improved, ironically so that it can be destroyed later. Trout Creek road is slated for demolition into a trail, and the road was improved so that heavy equipment could get up it in order to demolish it on the way down. But right now we had an easy 4-wheel up it in Al's Trooper. There are large rocky drainage ditches cut across the road, but we saw someone get a Subaru Outback up it, so they aren't that bad.

From here it's a hike up the old road for maybe 50 yards. The mine is on the left, and a trail takes off in a sort of loop around the major adits. Look for a stream coming out of a collapsed adit on the left.

The shaft is collapsed a few yards back, but you can take a peek in if you want to.



The trail continues up the hillside. Rain pants and waterproof jackets were a very good idea. Even though it wasn't raining, as anyone who's hiked in the Northwest in Winter knows:

Everything is wet.

Actually, scouting the area put me in mind of mushrooming. I'm definitely coming back her next Fall, the area looks quite promising.

The trail leads to another collapsed adit. The whole mine is basically in a state of total collapse, going inside isn't really an option. But there are some nice adits to peek into, and some mining debris around, but not much.






Eventually you'll come to the first chasm. This was a stope that collapsed back in the day, creating a huge pit in the ground. It's hard to get a sense of the scale of it. But I'd say you could fit a three story building inside it.






Inside it's hard to take a good picture. It's very wet, and very dark. The mist kept fogging out my photos. The roof is slowly coming down, and there's a lot of loose rock and a steep descent. At the bottom is a small waterfall that supposedly conceals a tunnel which connects to the largely caved in and cut off Level 1 of the mine. Of course, a look at the map will show that there are two winzes within feet of the supposed entrance, which means ropes, helmets and harnesses if we ever return to check that spot out.

Fortunately my new rain pants and oilcloth hat worked like a charm.

Did I mention it's wet in there?

There are some old structures still up in this chasm. I gather that this building was designed to protect the miners' access and the ore chutes after the stope collapsed in the 30's.

Now it hangs, eerily suspended in space above the cavern floor.





Moving back along the trail, occasionally bushwhacking it as the trail comes and goes, you come over a rise to another spectacular chasm.







Again, scale is difficult to show. That Douglas fir log on the left? Full grown, 100+ foot tall Doug fir.

A five story building would fit in this hole.






One of the cool things in this hole is a support beam placed high in the chasm.

Also, check out the green copper veins in the rockface.



I also really like this photo Meredith took from the bottom of the second chasm.

We cautiously entered the chasm and took a look around. Yep, it's a big, interesting hole in the ground.

Just then, we heard a loud crack!

We stood stock still and looked around, checking for falling rock. Another crack! We turned and hightailed it out of there as fast as we could. As we approached the surface though, it became obvious that the noises were gunshots. Someone had pulled up for a spot of target practice in the area. Still, whew. Yeah, this mine is in a state of collapse after all. We didn't know where our gun-enthusiasts had set up, so we stuck Meredith in front as we marched downhill to the car.

No, not as a shield.

She has bright yellow raingear. That was the reason. Absolutely. I also wrapped my obnoxious yellow and purple Husky scarf around my hat brim for increased visibility. Hey, it's warm and bright and there are people with guns out. Fact.

Afterwards, we headed up the highway toward Stevens Pass. We pulled off before the pass on the old Cascades Highway and went up the road for about two miles. The snow became deeper. We went into 4-wheel. The snow became deeper. We trudged on. Just when we hit the parking area where we would take off snowshoeing, the Trooper bottomed out.

We spent the next two hours digging the car out with a small entrenching shovel, some ski poles, a large stick I found, and some rocks pulled from the river. We got out just before it got dark. No snowshoeing. The less said about it the better, other than:

Chains. They're not just for decorating your trunk.

And yes despite that photo, we all dug the car out. I'm just heating my hands on the warm hood. Yep.

Obligatory Disclaimer: Don't go into old mines. Seriously, they are dangerous. Don't do it. Unless you really want to. Don't blame me if you pull a Cask of Amontillado.

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The Most Annoying Sound in the World

From our Monte Cristo Mine hike: here's Al and Meredith pushing the old railway turntable. I have to post this, just for the sound.



And because it's strikingly similar to this:

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One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor: Monte Cristo Ghost Town and the Mystery #3 Mine

After the success of the last mine/mushroom hike we decided to head out and explore another mine and see if the boletes were up in the high Cascades. The destination was the Mystery #3 Mine outside of the abandoned mining town of Monte Cristo in the Mt. Baker National Forest.

In the 1890's the town was the center of a major gold and silver mining operation, and boasted a population of around 2,000. There was even a railroad that ran loads of ore down to Everett for processing. But apparently the financial turmoil of the times and the cost/benefit ratio of the mines worked against the town. Active mining was effectively done by WWI and by the 1930's the place was a ghost town. Even still it lived on as a summer recreation destination and is to this day. The town is on a mountain stream, which is one of several tributaries to the South Fork of the Sauk River. A few years back the road to the town, which follows the old railroad bed, was washed out. Since then it's been a four mile hike/bike to get to the town. Fortunately the place is maintained by a volunteer organization, the Monte Cristo Preservation Association. The trailhead is on the Mountain Loop Highway, outside of Granite Falls. Near Barlow Pass you'll see the gate across the road to Monte Cristo. You can park outside but need to display a pass. There's a ranger station at Verlot where you can buy one.

From the trailhead it's four miles to town. Many people were hiking and biking the trail that day. For time reasons we opted for mountain bikes. The trail is very easy. Except where it isn't. The problem is washouts, and there are several, but the only really bad one is where the Sauk washed out the bridge. Here you have to cross either on one of these logs, go around a ways, or just get your feet wet. Not really a big problem on this day, but my friend was up a few weeks back and the river was raging.

One of the goals was to look for mushrooms and see if the boletes were up yet in that part of the Cascades. Unfortunately, trying not to wipe out on the bike limited my off-trail mushroom spotting. But we did see a wide variety of mushrooms, I bet a more thorough investigation would find plenty of edibles. We did find this big monster bolete right at the parking lot. Didn't pick it (it was pretty old) but definitely a promising sign.

When we got to the town and got off the bikes we had more time to look. And boy did we find mushrooms! Everywhere. The problem was that they were Amanitas. Loads and loads of them, including this happy little Mario mushroom here. Amanita muscaria, the Fly Agaric. Really cool looking. Potentially deadly freaking poisonous. Wildly hallucinogenic. No wonder Super Mario is so weird. These guys, and their relatives (we saw some A. Smithiana), were everywhere.

I should mention that they recently did some sampling of the soil in the area and it proved to be thoroughly tainted with heavy metals, including arsenic, from all the mining. Maybe this amanita is double-deadly?

Here's another crop of amanitas. You can see that they are more mature that the button up above, and have taken a sortof olive-yellow color. The little white warts are still there. These mushrooms can range in color from the classic red to yellow-green to white even. So once again, perfect example of don't eat any mushroom unless you know exactly what it is!

As for edibles, we didn't really find much. We found some Chicken of the Woods, but since it was growing on an old cedar log it was probably L. Conifericola and we weren't too keen on eating it. We did find this Gomphus kauffmanii, a relative of the Wooly Chanterelle G. floccosus, but didn't pick it. Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest advises against eating both, though some people do, and we bow to superior knowledge.

So after 4 miles of biking we were in the town. I must admit I haven't been mountain biking in years and my butt hurt something fierce and I was exhausted. Turns out my rear brake was rubbing on my tire. Joy. But we chained up the bikes and looked around the place. Many of the buildings have fallen apart or burned down over the years but there are still a few in place. Most are in the town center but there are random shacks out in the woods all over. The coolest thing in the town center is an old railroad turntable, where the engine and cars would be rotated around for the return trip down the mountain.

It still rotates, albeit with an amazing, ear-piercing wail.

We set off on the Glacier Basin trail and went about a mile along it. Again, loads of mushrooms and some cool old buildings and mining detritus. The area used to have a large boardwalk with several stores, and a tram that ran the miners up to the mines. Oh what I would have given to have that tram still work...

We reached the bottom of a boulder field that ran up the side of the nearby mountain, Mystery Hill. Here I have to add that I was never really told the full plan for this hike by my friend, and wasn't quite prepared for the climb to come.


You see, we'd reached the hidden stairway into Mordor.

And one does not simply walk into Mordor.

One slowly and painfully spends over two hours scrambling up boulders and through brush into Mordor.

One of the problems I've had trying to take photos of the trip was to capture a good impression of the slopes and altitude involved. The mind makes far off things look 2-D, and both at the base and the top of the climb you don't really get a good idea of the elevation gain. So here's a topo map from the GPS we had. In about a quarter mile it climbs from 3300 feet to 4200. A 900 foot elevation gain. Some parts were nearly a 60 degree slope of sliding rock. I was freaking exhausted by the end. I admit I am seriously out of shape and kind of hate exercise. It's not that I hate the idea of exercise, it's just that I don't like being sweaty. Or tired. And I was currently both of those. This had been the most strenuous outing I'd been on in some time. And it was only half over.

But we made it to the top! Actually the others made it there a fair ways before me. What can I say, I obviously need a Stairmaster or something. But we sat down to the best damn sandwich ever eaten by Man and a bottle of wine we'd packed in. By this point it was actually quite pleasant out. There was a nice view. There was lots of random crap strewn around, from old mining equipment to random camping equipment. And, creepily, shoes. Several pairs of old shoes. I kept thinking: "Please don't let there be a foot inside... Please don't let there be a foot inside."

We heard a weird scuttling noise from a nearby rock pile. Turned out to be this little guy, an American Pika. Apparently they're one of those creatures whose sole defense is cuteness, because they are currently under consideration for EPA Endangered Species protection. We kept hearing their weird high pitched alarm call, and hoping that it was just us freaking them out. You see, we'd been snacking on huckleberries the whole climb up the hill and well, bears like huckleberries too.

But it was time to enter the mine! We geared up for the coming exploration. Apparently back in the 1890's this mine was a model of mining progress. They even made a scale model and toured it around the country, showcasing the future of the mining arts.

Well, it's seen better days.

To be fair, this is just one entrance to an entire interlinked mining complex. Like most mines around here it's got a steady stream running out the mouth of it. This one happened to be very orangy and muddy.

We soon found out why.

Al was the first inside. He'd heard that the mud was there, but that it was shallow and you'd be quickly past it. He'd also heard that it was waste deep and impassible. Today appeared to be the later. It was pretty deep. Probing with a conveniently abandoned tent pole indicated that it only got deeper.

It was like a whole factory of Oompa Loompas had melted.

It was horrible.

I think that's what a group of Oompa Loompas is called, a "factory". If not it should be.

No really, it wasn't that bad. We could have waded in. Waste deep in neon-orange arsenic mud. We had changes of clothes. But it was getting late and discretion is the better part of valor. Al got his entrenching tool out and cleared up the stream a bit, so at least the mine might drain a bit better. Then we headed back down the boulder field, covering in about half an hour what had taken us two hours to climb. From there it was back to town, onto the bikes and back to the car. Again, fraction of the time it took to get there. The bikes are a pain riding up, but that coast the whole way down is sweet.

It was fun. It was thoroughly exhausting. The town is cool, I'll probably go back to look for more mushrooms sometime. But it will be a cold day in Mordor before I climb Satan's Stairmaster again...

Finally, again Disclaimer. Don't be an idiot. Don't go on sweet mountain bike adventures over raging rivers. Don't eat poisonous mushrooms because Mario told you to. Don't go into abandoned mines. Use some common sense, or if you don't have any, borrow someone else's for a bit. I'm not an expert on anything posted here, just an increasingly fat bloke who needs some more exercise and has strange friends and a supportive and patient spouse.

Editor's Note: Wow, this is post #101! Crazy. A proper blogstone, and I also think I recently passed my blogoversary. Blog blog blog.

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Of Mines and Mushrooms

So my friend Al is into exploring old mines, caves, buildings, boats and other abandoned structures around our area. And we were talking one day about mushrooms, and how he regularly sees them when he's out hiking. So we decided that we'd go out on Labor Day to explore an old mine and hunt for mushrooms along the way. It has been a very dry summer here in Puget Sound, so the mushrooming has been poor. But it rained all Labor Day weekend and we had hopes that we'd find something poking its head up out of the leaf litter...

So on a rainy Labor Day we set out. The mine was the Bergeson Prospect. It's up near the Money Creek campground near the Skykomish river and Stevens Pass off Highway 2. The approach isn't too complicated, but it involves driving to the right spot, then a bushwhack up a hill aways and then about 20 minutes hiking along an old overgrown road to a small creek with a waterfall. Directions can be found here over at 2DrX.

Along the way there are some interesting things. The forest is second growth, but the trees are all around 100 years old so they're not tiny. You can see old growth stumps like this one all around. Those two notches are logging platforms. Lumberjacks of yore cut notches in the side, then stuck boards in and stood on them while working the big two-man saw.

Along the way we'd seen many mushrooms, but very little edible. I'd harvested a few small puffballs near the car. (Right where I parked actually.) Otherwise we'd seen a lot of one kind of mushroom, some kind of Lactarius I think. But right near the entrance to the mine Al spotted a mushroom, which at first I dismissed as another of the lactarius until I got a closer look. Behold! Cantharellus formosus, the Pacific Golden Chanterelle. We looked around the area and managed to find a few more, about 1/4lb in total. This marks our first foraged chanterelles! Victory! But by this time it was really raining. Soaked, we figured it was time to go into the mine.

The chanterelles were near the stream that ran in front of the mine. I imagine the extra moisture is why we found them there, it's still pretty dry in the rest of the forest. But here's the mouth of the mine. Originally it was dug as a prospect shaft and it goes straight back over 900 feet, with a few small anti-chambers off to the sides. The prospect was abandoned a hundred years ago after they didn't find whichever mineral they were originally searching for. And so the mine sits, rusty old mining cart track, some old ventilation pipes, and other bits of random mining detritus left all around.

Though they didn't find what they were looking for, there is obviously plenty of other minerals in the mine. It is pretty wet in there, barely better than the rain outside. The first hundred feet or so are flooded to about calf height. If you walk carefully you can do a tightrope walk along the old mining cart track and with tall boots keep fairly dry. I somehow convinced Meredith to carry my duckboots in her pack, so my feet were nice and dry... Unlike hers.

Over the last century the minerals have leeched into the mine, forming amazingly cool little formations all over the place. The walls and ceiling are covered with a muddy mineral layer, and little proto-stalactites are forming on the ceiling. Here's a few photos:


It's also pitch black in there so you'll need flashlights and preferably headlights. As you can see, by this point I am in good spirits but pretty well soaked from all the rain and crashing through the wet brush. I need a new hiking hat. One without mesh holes all over it...



The mine thoroughly explored and us soaked to the bone, we headed home. We had some friends coming over for dinner later, so I got to cooking. I had a whole Coho from the farmer's market, so I decided to do salmon with a sortof wild mushroom ragout.

Here are the chanterelles that we found.


The small puffballs I found near the car are pretty common in the Cascades this time of year. I found some more by the mine, and some by a roadside up higher in another nearby valley. They were recently renamed Morganella pyriformis, but many people still refer to them by their old name Lycoperdon pyriforme. Lycoperdon translates as 'Wolf Fart' and I think I, and many others, will continue to call them Wolf Farts. Pyriforme relates to their pear-ish shape if I remember correctly.

The idea is to get them when they are firm and young. The ones past their prime will be squishy, probably have a crack or opening on the top, and shoot out a poof of olive drab spores when poked. ALWAYS cut them in half before eating, just to make sure they aren't actually a young budding form of any of the various white mushrooms that can kill you dead. The inside should look like a marshmallow, like the one above, and not like the one to the left, which is overripe and filled with mature olive drab spores.

I also had some White Chanterelles, Cantharellus subalbidus, that I'd purchased at Foraged and Found at the farmer's market the day before. They differ from the golden chanterelles in being more ivory colored, a bit tougher, and growing in slightly older forests.

So dinner.

Salmon with Wild Mushrooms


Take your mushrooms, in this case about a half pound of wild golden and white chanterelles and wolf farts, and slice. I would have preferred more mushrooms, but it was what we'd foraged so that was it. Into a pan goes a couple tablespoons of butter, some chopped shallots, a clove of garlic. Once this has cooked till the garlic is done but not burnt and the shallots are softer add the mushrooms. Cook off the liquid that comes out of them, then deglaze with a 3/4 cup of white wine. I used a Sav Blanc. Add some salt, pepper, herbs de provence, to taste. Cook until reduced to a nice mushroom sauce. You could add a couple tablespoons of heavy cream here if you wanted to. (I forgot.) It's ready to go on your salmon.

For the salmon, first pin-bone the fillet. It was about 1 1/2 pounds, maybe 2 lbs. Again, man I suck at filleting salmon. Portion it out. Brush the fillets with lemon juice. Then with melted butter. Then salt and pepper. Into the broiler until just before they look done (they'll finish while resting). To plate, top with the mushroom ragout. I used some green beans for a side (steamed, butter, salt, pepper). My guests brought some potato salad for the side as well. Serve with a slice of lemon.

It was awesome. The mushrooms were delicious. The wolf farts kind of turned into little squishy pouches for the sauce, which was tasty. Otherwise I don't think they taste like too much on their own. Salmon was perfectly done, I am definitely going to do the lemon/butter brushing again.

Finally, I'm not a professional mycologist or speleologist. I'm not an expert in caving or mushrooming. But I am a lawyer. So by way of a disclaimer I say unto thee: just be damn sure of what you're doing and don't be an idiot. Make sure you have positively identified any mushroom you plan to eat, and even then it's a good idea to only eat a little bit of one you haven't tried before. Do you're homework, make sure you know what you're doing. Crashing through the brush and going into old mines is inherently dangerous. Seriously, don't do it. Unless you really want to.

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