O&B Mine July, 2005

Monte Cristo was going to be the destination for a backpacking trip with the 2DrX brother and nephew, planned since last fall when they saw the ore that came back from the Sidney Mine. Camping at Silver Lake, and visiting the O&B Mine seemed like a good objective, especially since I was chased away from near the O&B by a bear last year. The week before I had been up the Glacier Basin trail, and had a great view of the O&B route and mine dump.

We stashed the truck away, and hefted the packs for the hike

The flatlanders arrived by aircraft the day before, minus all baggage including backpacks, lost enroute. A shopping spree at REI ensued, and we were able to fill in the gaps with what we would need, including enough food for a week. We were sure not to go hungry on our overnight trip. Luckily, the baggage arrived in Seattle that night, and we met later to finalize all our equipment and make sure we had everything.

We made our way up the last rough trail to the pass

The cramped drive the next morning to the Monte Cristo townsite went pretty quick. We parked the truck, hefted the big packs, and made our way by the old locomotive turntable, up to the Poodle Dog Pass trailhead. We dutifully signed in, and pondered the strange question on the form regarding trip purpose. We decided "digging for gold" would be fairly accurate. The morning was getting hot, and after some slow progress up the switchbacks, we made really good time. Stops were made periodically to try to stay hydrated. In seemingly no time (about 2 hours), we found ourselves struggling up the last steep rocky slope and finally up to Poodle Dog Pass. Silver Lake was deserted, so we had the pick of campsites and took the excellent one overlooking the lake and outlet. Lucky!

We made our way along the ridge to the east of Cultus Lake

We quickly set up camp, ate a bite, and packed some small packs. Our plan was to hit the O&B that afternoon. Since it was getting pretty hot, we made sure that we filtered and took plenty of liquids with us. Silver Lake really was the best (and maybe only) water along the way. We backtracked to Poodle Dog Pass, and started up the small foot path to the north. After a while, we lost the path, and just plowed through the brush and trees on the ridge top. This wasn't bad, but would be worse on a wet day. After about 20 minutes, we finally came to the small pass with the strange pile of rocks and what looked to be an old sign at one time. Looking down the gully north, we could see Cultus Lake.

We started down towards the lake, and chose to stay to the right and traverse up high above the lake hoping for a path. None appeared, but the travel wasn't too bad. (Circling Cultus Lake on the east is a bad idea due to the steep shore, the west side is easy.) We soon dropped down the mini-ridge and came to the outlet, crossed and climbed up to the hillside due north of the lake. Here we ran across the old cast iron remains of a stove, and logs and more artifacts from a cabin that had stood there probably 100 years ago.

100 years ago the O&B cabin stood at this location...

... warmed during the cold weather by a cast iron Boxwood stove

We carefully inspected artifacts before setting them back in place

From near the cabin site, we could actually see the O&B mine dump through the trees. We crossed a small gully that went down, and started a somewhat traversing line along the slope toward the mine, trying not to lose too much elevation. In retrospect, the little grassy and loggy gully is probably the best way to go descending to more open terrain and walking over to the bottom of the waste rock material. In a few minutes we reached the dump, and split up for a short time exploring up. Shouts from the 2DrX nephew indicated that he had found the lower adit.

The O&B Mine dump is large and can be seen from far away

I found a caved adit in the gully next to the rock wall. I could see water inside. After a while, we all met somewhere in the middle of the dump material, and continued up. The O&B dump is very steep and loose, and we took turns trying to brain each other with tumbling rocks. We started to find some good chunks of ore as we went up which was exciting.

The upper O&B adit was collapsed and covered by slide material

After about 200 feet, we finally came to an upper landing on the dump, the logical place for an adit. No adit though - instead there was a large swathe of fresh landslide material, huge dirty rocks which blanketed the area. We could see where the top of the adit was located, but that was all. Entry into the upper adit would not be possible any longer.

More scrambling up the slope revealed the collapsed stopes from the upper adit. The terrain here was very steep and treacherous, so while the others rested below, I snapped some photos of the old stopes, now taking on the appearance of deep trenches in the rock. Old stulls (wooden cross beams) littered the gully below the stope area, and one could make out the niches cut in the rock walls of the stope to support the stulls and mining equipment. Digging upwards, the miners broke out into the open, leaving these "glory holes" as evidence of their hard work.

We started into the lower adit keeping an eye on the old shoring

We descended together back to the lower adit that the 2DrX nephew had located. According to the old mineral survey map for the O&B mine done in 1910, the claim was located on July 30, 1891 by an entity only known as the "O and B Mining and Milling Company". The survey makes it look like all the workings were located on the lode line then, possibly more were added later.

We started in the lower adit after a brief rest, and carefully stepped on rocks, timbers and anything else to keep us out of the water for the first 100 feet or so. The mine here was shored quite heavily due to the overburden it was dug into initially. Some of the timbers didn't look that great so we were careful to not touch them too much on our way in.

The tunnel straight ahead had a sudden strange step up

After a few hundred feet, we came to an intersection of sorts - just ahead was a strange step up of about 3 feet to a tunnel that seemed to go to the right. At our feet were the remains of an old wheelbarrow. We decided to follow the main drift left, and after about 50 feet or so we could see some caving had happened at some point in time, and the tunnel beyond it held more water than we wanted our boots to deal with. We turned around and gave our attention to the part of the tunnel that stepped up a few feet.

The left drift was in solid rock until we reached the caved area

We climbed up the muck into the upper level of the tunnel, finding that a rock hammer helped nicely. Looking to the right, we could see some faint daylight. This must be from the caved adit that I saw when I first climbed the dump. It would be at about the same elevation. Our lights showed deep water just beyond where we stood, the water being backed up at the caved adit. A pile of white claylike material stood at our feet, evidently never making it out of the mine. We figured that the caved adit had been dug first, and the better protected shored adit had been dug later to intersect the other drift.

We found an old caved adit in the middle of the gully

Not much more was to be seen in the adit, so we made our way out. Packing everything up, we cut down and across to the main gully and rock wall. A little bit lower were some mechanical remains, maybe related to the small tramway that was in service for a short while. It wasn't hard to imagine where it would have been, an old eyebolt in the cliff wall gave us a clue as did a small landing below. It would have been a straight whot down to the townsite below.

Dinnertime was approaching, and we still had a ways to get back to camp. We traversed across the dump, suffering a bruising fall on the steep slope, and also some hornet stings from a nest disturbed as we went by. We ended up climbing the easy gully back to Cultus Lake, rounding the lake on the marshy west side and climbing up the next gully to the ridge. After this, a steep but direct shot was taken down towards Silver Lake. We took a quick swim before dinner, and relaxed with the bugs around camp. A bizarre twilight show by the Sheriff's Huey helicopter landing in the meadows next to Silver Lake brought us out of our tents for a while, before we finally turned in. We later heard that there was an injured hiker on the trail below Poodle Dog Pass.

The next morning we decided to explore some of the workings around Silver Lake. Just across the outlet and around to the south side of Silver Lake is the FE Davis prospect, also known as the Black Bear prospect. We made our way across the meadows to where the rock slide (and dump material) falls toward the lake, about a 5 minute hike from the Silver Lake outlet. We climbed the side of the talus beside the tailings to an obvious flat landing.

In a small draw we found the dump from the Sue Kay prospect

At one time there was a 160 foot adit here, but now it was hard to see where it may have been, somewhere under the mass of rock that had fallen from above. We spent some time whacking at the numerous pieces of ore that were lying around, including some huge specimens that, after futile attempts, required massive boulders to be smashed upon them to crack them open.

We rounded the lake, W. Danseau Prospect in sight ahead

After a while, we climbed another 100 feet up to the top of the dump material to the location of the upper adit. This was the reported 7-foot adit, which was really about 4 or 5 feet deep. Nothing special was going on here, or above, so after a while we climbed back down to the lower landing and outlined our next plan. We had a great vantage point here of the north side of the lake [large image], and we could see some of the other prospects that we need to get to.

Near the adit location was Danseau's old wheelbarrow

Getting around the shoreline of Silver lake to the north was really unpleasant. We had to stay up high in the brush for a while, and get around some loose dirt at different points. The final shoreline traverse was miserable, but soon we came out to more open ground. Traversing the shoreline a little longer put us in a small gully at the northeast side of the lake. This was the location of the Sue Kay Prospect, which long ago boasted an adit some 50+ feet in length. We could see the obvious dump from the mine, and I climbed up a steep slope to see what was above. Alas, much slide material remained above the dump, and in places I could see black depths underneath, the adit closed forever.

Back down on the shore, we kept traversing counter-clockwise, towards the next waste rock pile that we could see in the distance which marked the W. Danseau Prospect. This was located a couple hundred feet up from the lake, right on the north side. We climbed in the now hot heat of mid-day to the dump, where the remains of an old wheelbarrow lay. Just behind (and lower down) were what seemed to be old collapsed tunnels again. If there were open tunnels here, we didn't see them. W. Danseau probably died a poor man.

We returned along the same miserable route above the shore, reaching our camp at about noon, and having lunch. We broke down camp in the hot heat, and struggled back down to the townsite with heavy packs full of ore samples, where cold drinks were awaiting.

References:

• Discovering Washington's Historic Mines - Oso Publishing. O&B Mine information, Silver Lake Prospects.
• Monte Cristo - Woodhouse. Information on the O&B Mine and other Monte Cristo lore.
• Mineral Resources of the Glacier Peak RARE II Area - US Bureau of Mines. Monte Cristo Mine information.