AS winter slowly decends on us in Ontario I look forward to more of your treks!! I only wish I could head out my back door for the same sort of adventure!
Here we have several hours of highway to drive on and then we are typically on forest trails. Lot of opportunity to drive to old mills and mines and ghost towns but your backyard amazes me!!
C
Well - Yesterdays trek we did infact drive a couple hours before we were on dirt - ->
Land Rover Trek 193 – 11 December 2010 – Penelas, Ellsworth, Ione, Downeyville
Another Monte-Disco Production – Snow, Ice, Mud and Rock
0600 – Up, showered, packed and ready to go.
0700 – On the way to Fallon.
0800 – Breakfast done and headed east on 50.
0920 – 59 miles from Fallon – We’re onto the dirt in Buffalo Canyon. Hit the first slushy snow, ice and mud at a bit above 5000 feet at Big Buffalo Well. Near the Buffalo Hump Mine the slush is getting a bit deeper, slushier and with some ice and almost frozen mud we are beginning the windy climb up to Buffalo Summit at a bit over 6000 feet.
The climb was a bit hairy; to add to the steepness of the climb are several sharp turns along the road that tend to dig in the front wheels and throw out the rears, getting us a bit crossways. It’s not too bad except for the places where there side of the drop off falls into a deep wash. We reach the top and both agree that this is an occasion where mud-terrains would have been an advantage over our all-terrains.
We are now heading south-south-east down Ione Valley. The road is really sloppy now. At each minor wash crossing we have to keep the momentum up crossing the standing water over the mud. We pass the Bruner and Phonolite Mines and start looking for a trail that should lead us towards the Penelas Mines. I find the trail but after about ¾ of a mile it ends at a fence line and we run due south on a trail that isn’t on the map and come to a well and a gate. Thru the gate is a westerly road that goes towards Penelas.
The run up to Penelas is across muddy snow for the first two miles and then becomes mud-rock mix for the second two miles to the ridge top and the mines. They are some fresh grading and it looks as if some modern prospectors are re-working the area. We turn around and run due east the four miles back to the main Ione road.
About six miles down the Ione Road we reach a westerly trail that will take us up to Ellsworth Canyon. The site of Ellsworth lies at about 7300 feet between Fairview Peak (7758 feet) and Sherman Peak (8857) to the south. Once above 7000 feet the mud and snow are colder and firmer; allowing for much better traction.
Ellsworth has several still standing buildings, a 1938 General Motors Truck which is still mostly intact, some home-built looking ore processing equipment and some furnishings still remaining in the buildings that look as if they may have still been occupied into the later 40s or early 50s. We wander all over and then get back on the road to run higher into the canyon up to the Return Mine. Not much at the Return except for tailings piles. Now the snow is real snow and the mud isn’t. It’s very good traction.
We now run east again towards Ione. I promise to buy Ben a beer at the Ore House in Ione. When we get to Ione it seems as if the town is closed. Nobody is here. We take a few pictures and being as it is now already 1230 we run south-west and over Brunton Pass towards Gabbs. Going down the west side of the pass I decide to take some trails to the north and explore Craig Canyon and the site of the mining town of Downeyville.
Downeyville was a lead and silver mine and at one time had a population of about 200. There are three different trails on the map but only the third one still seems to exist. It’s pretty faint and I have to do some serious looking to find a trail that turns west to intersect Craig Canyon Wash. Eventually the trail just follows the good gravel wash and is easy to follow. At 1350 (and 127 miles) we reach the first of about eight or nine mine shafts and tunnels that comprise the mines. There are the stone foundations of buildings along both sides of the wash.
Some of these shafts are quite deep. One which is covered with a heavy duty steel grill we drop some rocks into. The rocks clatter pretty much straight down for eight seconds and then we can hear them rolling and bouncing along an inclined slope for another eight seconds. You do the math using the formula 32 feet per second per second - - - . Could this shaft drop 1000 feet?
Once reaching highway 361, we do the 100 miles of pavement back to Fallon. The total distance from Fallon to Fallon is 230 miles. About 60 of it has been in the muddy snow.
;D 
