Snow patches still garnish the Gaylor Lakes
The finest house left in Dana CityCopyright 2008 Lydia Hinshaw
LEE VINING, CA -- Our weekend arrived, and of course we headed to the High Sierra again.
Monday's hike to Gaylor Lakes was neither long nor strenuous, but provided outstanding scenery and interesting artifacts. Perhaps we should rethink all these 12-mile hikes we've been doing, if things can get this good barely two miles from the parking lot.
Most of this junket was at just above 10,000 feet, which didn't seem to bother us until we sat down to eat a snack and then stood up too fast, which produced a lightheadedness that dissolved in a couple of seconds.
One of the real joys of our semi-retired state has been the opportunity to get interested in things we'd never thought much about before. Two years ago in Whitehorse, Yukon, we became regulars at the fish ladder, where we learned all about Chinook salmon and their arduous 2,300-mile trip to spawn and die.
That summer, we also had to learn a lot about the Klondike Gold Rush for our jobs as tour guides. And now we find ourselves drawn to old mining sites. It doesn't hurt that my brother in Nevada knows a lot about mining history. We e-mail him pictures of things we've seen, and he can tell us what the heck we were looking at.
Monday we wandered around what was once called "Dana City," though the word "city" is a big stretch.
Back in the 1880s, the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Mining Company operated mines in this area for a couple of years. We found several open shafts (read: black holes) where you could probably disappear forever -- or at least provoke a major rescue operation -- with one mis-step.
There were also the remains of a number of cabins, constructed out of the only material available, rocks. A few timbers remain too -- these had to be hauled up here from somewhere below. That anything at all is left of these structures is remarkable, considering that they are more than 120 years old.
Back down the hill in Lee Vining, we browsed the local bookstore to get a line on another old mining town nearby. We'll check it out tomorrow, if we can find it.
Monday's hike to Gaylor Lakes was neither long nor strenuous, but provided outstanding scenery and interesting artifacts. Perhaps we should rethink all these 12-mile hikes we've been doing, if things can get this good barely two miles from the parking lot.
Most of this junket was at just above 10,000 feet, which didn't seem to bother us until we sat down to eat a snack and then stood up too fast, which produced a lightheadedness that dissolved in a couple of seconds.
One of the real joys of our semi-retired state has been the opportunity to get interested in things we'd never thought much about before. Two years ago in Whitehorse, Yukon, we became regulars at the fish ladder, where we learned all about Chinook salmon and their arduous 2,300-mile trip to spawn and die.
That summer, we also had to learn a lot about the Klondike Gold Rush for our jobs as tour guides. And now we find ourselves drawn to old mining sites. It doesn't hurt that my brother in Nevada knows a lot about mining history. We e-mail him pictures of things we've seen, and he can tell us what the heck we were looking at.
Monday we wandered around what was once called "Dana City," though the word "city" is a big stretch.
Back in the 1880s, the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Mining Company operated mines in this area for a couple of years. We found several open shafts (read: black holes) where you could probably disappear forever -- or at least provoke a major rescue operation -- with one mis-step.
There were also the remains of a number of cabins, constructed out of the only material available, rocks. A few timbers remain too -- these had to be hauled up here from somewhere below. That anything at all is left of these structures is remarkable, considering that they are more than 120 years old.
Back down the hill in Lee Vining, we browsed the local bookstore to get a line on another old mining town nearby. We'll check it out tomorrow, if we can find it.
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