EISPIRATEN

Yesterday I drove up Little Tujunga to check out Pacoima Canyon. I became interested in surveying the trail after its caretaker, Mr. Bircsak, recently posted about it here. He has been working on the path since 2003, clearing it between Dillon Divide and Dagger Flats. But in 2016 the Sand Fire devastated the canyon. Forest Service officials then closed the area for a couple years, and in that time much of the path has been eroded and overgrown. Mr. Bircsak now seeks assistance in restoring the historic trail, which leads to the site of an old gold mining operation.

I surveyed the route from Dillon Divide to Dutch Louie Mine, a water diversion tunnel once used for gold mining. The beginning of Mendenhall Ridge Road is fine, except for mustard trying to overtake some small sections.



The start of Pacoima Canyon Road is also good, though overgrown. The bed is basically intact to the first major gully crossing with the little dam construction. It begins with about a five-foot wide clearing, then it narrows down to a couple feet.



After the gully crossing, the road bed has been washed out in three or four places.



Several landslides cover the bed and push the trail to the edge of the road.



Also, much of the remaining road route is essentially a narrow use path with light to medium bushwhacking all the way down to the water tank.



Beyond the water tank, as you turn right and approach the streambed, the old road is mostly eroded away, with barely detectable segments remaining here and there.



The canyon-bottom portion of the trail is generally characterized as a cairn-guided scramble with heavy bushwhacking between segments of deteriorated, overgrown road bed.

Also, a few poodle dog bushes were present and blooming along the banks.





The original stream-crossings now present significant challenges. Scramblers have since created roundabout, makeshift crossings which can be hard to locate. Even in July, the water level below Dutch Louie Tunnel discouraged simply walking through the stream.





I ran out of time and turned around at the water diversion tunnel, which is obscured by plants and cannot be seen until you're within a few feet of it. Though it can be heard from a greater distance, as it sounds like a large spring pouring out of the cliff base.



Here is my survey map showing the major issues.

Some girl just posted pix on imgur (https://imgur.com/a/lPiHJkI) about this. I had never heard of Dutch Louie's tunnel.

Here was her comment on reddit:

I did an awful amount of bush wacking- just had to march straight through the jungle of it all. I saw few cairns along the way to the tunnel, but on the way back I saw them more easily and it made the trip back a little better! Idk what organization he was with but there was a guy surveying the trail and taking pictures. We helped each other to find the tunnel.

Was she talking about you?

tekewin wrote: Was she talking about you?

Yeah. I met a man and his daughter. We teamed up for the stretch along the stream. The man had been to the tunnel years ago and was surprised by how overgrown the vegetation had gotten since then.

Dutch Louie's Sad Obituary .....

HERMIT DIGS OWN GRAVE.
Then Goes Home to Die, Leaving Pathetic Note to Coroner.

“Dutch Louie,” known throughout the Southwest as the hermit of the Pacoima, a few days ago walked slowly from his hut, which is 5 miles from Pacoima, and selecting a spot on the hillside, dug himself a narrow grave.

Then he returned to his home, dressed himself in his best clothing and lay down to die. All that he told in a letter he wrote to the coroner just before he lay down for the last time.

The note, a pitiful chronicle of hope that never died, asked the coroner to bury him without ceremony in the grave he had dug and to mark it only with a scant inscription, “Dutch Louie.”

“I don’t fear death,” wrote the hermit. “It is the inevitable wages of life — and I have lived. For scores of years I have lived in the hope of finding the bonanza I had dreamed of and prayed for. I never found it, but I was cheered to the end by the star of hope.”

The body was found by hunters.

The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.) Jun 8, 1915

Dutch Louie's pick used to be stuck in a rock outside the tunnel. Don't know if it's still there.



The last time I was up there the Dutch Louie was bone dry on the inside



There are other mines upstream. The first one is a shallow titanium mine.



The second one I found by accident near the site of an old wrecked car.



There are a lot of other ones hidden on the hillsides, but I'll probably never find them. This one's about 100 feet deep.



The hunter's blind probably burned up in the fire, I haven't been up there lately.



There's also a mountain lion that roams the upper part of the canyon, which goes on forever.

All good stuff!