Kitanning Mine May, 2004

After our visit to the Bergeson Prospect in the morning, we left the Money Creek area and drove back west on US 2 to the Index cutoff. We figured a quick trip to the Kitanning Mine would round out our day. The directions to park were kind of obscure: drive to the Trout Creek bridge, and continue 1.5 miles further to a small turnout on the left side of the road. As advertised, there was a small space for the truck to pull over on. This probably was it, and after we got out and stretched our legs, we found a clue that confirmed our suspicions that this indeed was the start of the Kitanning Mine route. Hmmm.

A blind man could follow the flags to the Kitanning Mine

An obvious trail could be seen across the road, vanishing into the trees. We started up the route, which begins as a visible footpath in the open forest. Soon we came upon a proliferation of flagging tape, seemingly every few feet. There would be no problem today finding the route. As we climbed along the route, several men wearing dark glasses and tapping white canes overtook us, passing by on their way to the mine.

The Kitanning Cabin was an old shack with tarps on the roof

The way continued up through open forest, not too steep, pretty much in a SE direction up the fall line. After about 15 minutes, we could see something bright blue/green up the hill. As we got closer, we could see the remains of an old cabin cuddled up against a cliff. Much of the cabin was still standing, missing large parts of the roof though. Obnoxious blue and green tarps had been draped across the roofline to keep out rain.

Looking inside the Kitanning Cabin. Where's Waldo?

There were two plastic garbage cans outside the Kitanning Cabin, completly filled with garbage and crap. Inside the cabin was some newer junk, stove cannisters, a collapsible chair, and other sundry stuff including a newer groovy 60's-style stove/fireplace that was probably stolen from a cabin down by the river. Someone may have been "living" at the cabin for a while, or maybe kids came up here to hang out and drink beer. Only the rats know for sure. We hung around for a while and filmed a few funny little movies about the "Haunted Miner's Cabin."

We looked into the lower adit but decided go in later

Just around the cabin to the left was the lower adit, tucked below some impressive cliff slabs. Even though it was noon, we decided to push up to the upper adit before we ate lunch. We gathered our packs and followed the flags past the lower adit up the hill. We would save the lower adit for the trip back.

A member looking down from the rock prow by the upper adit

The route up to the upper adit supposedly followed a "draw" up the hillside; this feature was not super evident. Flags here helped a lot, as did the sometimes visible foot path up the open forest hillside. It got steeper after a while, and some huge blowdowns slowed our progress. After a while, on e of us was hopelessly staggering up the hillside, as the first member streaked up the final climb to the adit. Soon the sounds of ZZ Top could be heard above, signifying that we had found the upper adit.

Just inside the adit were old mine rails and a rusty wheelbarrow

The final push to the mine wasn't difficult, but the adit area did sit on the edge of a rocky promentory, with views across the valley. The upper adit was bored into a red slice of mineralization that cut down from the cliff above. A large tree had fallen some time ago across the little gorge created by the adit. We sat on part of that old tree and ate lunch, which even included soup from a fired up stove. It had taken us about 45 minutes to climb up from the lower adit.

After we ate, we finally got around to getting our lights out and getting ready to go in. It was amazing the amount of stuff that we had brought up to the mine this day; all of our stuff sat around in piles in front of the adit. We wouldn't be needing our rubber boots for Kitanning, even though we brought them. We ducked past the large log in front of the adit and started in.

Immediately inside the mine on the left side were a bunch of old mine rails leaning against the tunnel wall, possibly where they came to rest 100 years ago. Just beyond was an old rusted out wheelbarrow. The tunnel floor was dry and followed a raised bed with mine rails still intact most of the way inside. Making our way in deeper, we stopped at several areas where the miners worked upwards and dug into the ceiling. There were interesting timber shoring at intervals, and on one of these we found a sign of life.

We started into the mine, which was dry with plenty of room

We stopped every so often to look at stuff...

... and soon found our way to the end of the line

The upper Kitanning adit was about 500 some feet deep. Near the end of the tunnel, we could see that people had been prospecting near the vein on the tunnel ceiling. We took the lazy approach, and dug around on the floor below the activity, picking up some samples that had been dug previously and left behind. According to the camera, it had taken us about 10 minutes to make our way to the end of the tunnel. We started out, making better time, and taking some cool photos of the tunnel floor along the way.

The lower adit had an interesting red tomb-like section

We packed up and made the descent though the rough woods, down to the lower adit and cabin area. It was still rough travel, but quicker downhill. We decided to go in the lower adit, and quickly made our way to the end. It was kind of drippy, and had some interesting stains on the walls.

Part of the tunnel was very square-ish and red, looking like the inside of one of the Egyptian tombs or something. We came back out, and staggered back down the route in the forest, wearily following the flags until hit the road. It was a quiet drive back down the highway.

References:

• Discovering Washington's Historic Mines - Oso Publishing. Kitanning Mine information.