Baldora, Gold Dollar, San Antonio Ridge
Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 10:15 pm
I'm working on visiting places on my mental to-do list, and checking them off this list. It's taking a while, but I'm slowly-but-surely making progress. On Sunday I went to the East Fork to hit Baldora Mine, Gold Dollar mine and the interesting half of San Antonio Ridge. This list implies a specific loop route, and when Zé had similar goals a few years back, he put together a similar trip. This means that everything is already documented, but I'll write it up anyway 
Anyhow, I started at Heaton Flat, walked up to Coldwater Saddle, and traversed towards Coldwater Canyon behind Widman Ranch. I cleaned up the brush on this trail the last time I was here, and it is still passable. The heavy rains of last year are bringing the brush back, and it could use some more trimming. Anybody know how to trim back yucca quickly? Loppers work, but it takes a long time since you have to cut back every single tip. Is a machete better for this?
As before, the old trail becomes an old road, which is FULL of yucca. Then you drop into Dry Gulch. I followed the gulch up; there's a good use trail on the west side. The old truck is still there:
I stayed in the creek bed above the truck, and somehow completely missed the Widco site from the last time. This was on the West side of the creek. A bit above there the gulch got some surface water, and the ruins of Baldora mine came into view on the East side.
There's lots of stuff here! Besides the house was some sort of ore processing structure.
And all sorts of miscellanea scattered around
There was a metal cover of some sort with a knob that could be set to "fast" or "slow"
I looked up the patent, and it IS a mining patent, but doesn't seem applicable: it's about electrically separating the copper in your ore. Maybe it works for gold too. Or maybe patent application numbers were different from patent grant numbers back then.
The house is sparsely furnished
and the ore processing stuff is cool
I still had a lot to do, so I didn't linger too long. There was no obvious adit anywhere, and I'm certain I missed lots of stuff. CrazyHermit: you mentioned the last time that this is Widco AND Baldora. Does that mean that the two sites are part of a single operation? The ore was dug from the site on the West side, then transported to THIS side to be processed?
Onwards. When Zé was doing this, he tried to stay on old trails as much as possible. I had no faith that these would exist in any form, much less be useful. So I did a bit of armchair reconnaissance before I headed out, and decided that the best course of action would be to stay in Dry Gulch as long as possible, and to turn right into a gully that goes more or less to the Gold Dollar Mine site. This looked to be clear of brush, and less steep than the rest of the available terrain.
The plan was sound. But in reality, I hit this:
(Sorry for the bad photos, my camera couldn't handle the lighting conditions.) This thing is sheer and HUGE, maybe 50ft. No way I'm climbing this thing. There was a doable-looking scree slope on the right, so up I went. Initially I was just going to bypass the falls, but I heard some rocks falling above, and just kept climbing to chase imagined sheep. There doesn't seem to be a lot of brush anywhere in this area. It's pretty steep, but all seemed manageable. Lots of scree here, and it's not too difficult finding sections with larger (and more stable) rocks. I did end up on all fours a lot, for traction and balance mostly, not battling brush. I guess the other side of this ridge (towards Eagle Mine) is supposed to be worse, but I did ok here. Didn't find any sheep, or mapped trails, but there're some animal trails here and there; nothing particularly useful, though.
My main GPS refused to work in the canyon. The backup GPS sorta worked, but I had some doubts about where exactly I was. Finally, I came up on a rusted bucket of some sort, and climbed straight up to see rusted out fuel barrels, and eventually, the Gold Dollar Mine site. It's a wrecked pile of stuff:
This is the ore processing area, I think.
On top is an ore hopper
that feeds the rest of the pile. This mine is completely insane. Even more than Stanley-Miller, it's difficult to imagine how they decided this was a good idea. One open question is: where did their water come from? The obvious sources are all significantly below.
I hung around for a bit. Wasn't making great time, and was a bit concerned that I still had to gain San Antonio ridge, and then cross the notches which, by the way, look like this from the site:
Gunsight notch is the one on the right. I didn't take the time to look for the residential area. Anybody know where it is? I climbed up towards the ridge, and found one of the cables almost on top of San Antonio Ridge. I guess the adit is somewhere along the cable?
Nearing the top you get better and better view of the notches:
Despite our non-winter, the North side of Baldy has some snow:
I got to the ridge and turned West. I was surprised to see that this ridge gets some maintenance: many trees, big and small, were cut down:
Is this the forest service trying to reduce the number of lightning rods? Some of the cut plants were smaller ones, on the climbing route. And some cuts were there clearly to make it easier to pass
What's the deal? Gunsight notch was as advertised: VERY intimidating-looking, but quite easy in practice.
I took my sweet time, and the whole ridge felt fine. The rock is generally solid, and the holds are good and plentiful. Eventually you can see the W15 post at the top of the last bump
And then you're at the top, and can look at Catalina Island and the barges on the water.
Anyhow, I started at Heaton Flat, walked up to Coldwater Saddle, and traversed towards Coldwater Canyon behind Widman Ranch. I cleaned up the brush on this trail the last time I was here, and it is still passable. The heavy rains of last year are bringing the brush back, and it could use some more trimming. Anybody know how to trim back yucca quickly? Loppers work, but it takes a long time since you have to cut back every single tip. Is a machete better for this?
As before, the old trail becomes an old road, which is FULL of yucca. Then you drop into Dry Gulch. I followed the gulch up; there's a good use trail on the west side. The old truck is still there:
I stayed in the creek bed above the truck, and somehow completely missed the Widco site from the last time. This was on the West side of the creek. A bit above there the gulch got some surface water, and the ruins of Baldora mine came into view on the East side.
There's lots of stuff here! Besides the house was some sort of ore processing structure.
And all sorts of miscellanea scattered around
There was a metal cover of some sort with a knob that could be set to "fast" or "slow"
I looked up the patent, and it IS a mining patent, but doesn't seem applicable: it's about electrically separating the copper in your ore. Maybe it works for gold too. Or maybe patent application numbers were different from patent grant numbers back then.
The house is sparsely furnished
and the ore processing stuff is cool
I still had a lot to do, so I didn't linger too long. There was no obvious adit anywhere, and I'm certain I missed lots of stuff. CrazyHermit: you mentioned the last time that this is Widco AND Baldora. Does that mean that the two sites are part of a single operation? The ore was dug from the site on the West side, then transported to THIS side to be processed?
Onwards. When Zé was doing this, he tried to stay on old trails as much as possible. I had no faith that these would exist in any form, much less be useful. So I did a bit of armchair reconnaissance before I headed out, and decided that the best course of action would be to stay in Dry Gulch as long as possible, and to turn right into a gully that goes more or less to the Gold Dollar Mine site. This looked to be clear of brush, and less steep than the rest of the available terrain.
The plan was sound. But in reality, I hit this:
(Sorry for the bad photos, my camera couldn't handle the lighting conditions.) This thing is sheer and HUGE, maybe 50ft. No way I'm climbing this thing. There was a doable-looking scree slope on the right, so up I went. Initially I was just going to bypass the falls, but I heard some rocks falling above, and just kept climbing to chase imagined sheep. There doesn't seem to be a lot of brush anywhere in this area. It's pretty steep, but all seemed manageable. Lots of scree here, and it's not too difficult finding sections with larger (and more stable) rocks. I did end up on all fours a lot, for traction and balance mostly, not battling brush. I guess the other side of this ridge (towards Eagle Mine) is supposed to be worse, but I did ok here. Didn't find any sheep, or mapped trails, but there're some animal trails here and there; nothing particularly useful, though.
My main GPS refused to work in the canyon. The backup GPS sorta worked, but I had some doubts about where exactly I was. Finally, I came up on a rusted bucket of some sort, and climbed straight up to see rusted out fuel barrels, and eventually, the Gold Dollar Mine site. It's a wrecked pile of stuff:
This is the ore processing area, I think.
On top is an ore hopper
that feeds the rest of the pile. This mine is completely insane. Even more than Stanley-Miller, it's difficult to imagine how they decided this was a good idea. One open question is: where did their water come from? The obvious sources are all significantly below.
I hung around for a bit. Wasn't making great time, and was a bit concerned that I still had to gain San Antonio ridge, and then cross the notches which, by the way, look like this from the site:
Gunsight notch is the one on the right. I didn't take the time to look for the residential area. Anybody know where it is? I climbed up towards the ridge, and found one of the cables almost on top of San Antonio Ridge. I guess the adit is somewhere along the cable?
Nearing the top you get better and better view of the notches:
Despite our non-winter, the North side of Baldy has some snow:
I got to the ridge and turned West. I was surprised to see that this ridge gets some maintenance: many trees, big and small, were cut down:
Is this the forest service trying to reduce the number of lightning rods? Some of the cut plants were smaller ones, on the climbing route. And some cuts were there clearly to make it easier to pass
What's the deal? Gunsight notch was as advertised: VERY intimidating-looking, but quite easy in practice.
I took my sweet time, and the whole ridge felt fine. The rock is generally solid, and the holds are good and plentiful. Eventually you can see the W15 post at the top of the last bump
And then you're at the top, and can look at Catalina Island and the barges on the water.
