What's New

11/15/2006
This is more along the lines of bad news: the Monte Cristo road has suffered some major damage in the recent storms and flooding lately. The clay bank slump (a little more than .5 miles in) which is usually a trouble spot has been wiped out.

Just a little further up, the twin bridges seem to have survived structurally, except now a large tree is laying on the first bridge. Also, the South Fork Sauk river has changed it's course again by the bridges, this time a new channel has been opened up just before the first bridge. Can you say Triplet Bridges?

This is obviously a huge setback for motorized access to the Monte Cristo townsite. This damage won't be repaired any time soon, if ever. Thanks to John for the photos.

07/10/2006
Wow, there's not much going on in the news here for a year. Now the creek crossing on the Monte Cristo road is a little wider, still about the same depth. Jimbo's rig again shows us the extent of the crossing as of late June 2006.

06/29/2005
Here is what the creek crossing on the Monte Cristo road looks like as of late June (photo by Jimbo). Evidently over the winter Mother Nature decided to re-route more water to the small creek that usually is very shallow during the summer. The picture shows the water about a foot deep, not really a problem for high clearance 4x4's.

02/23/2005
Some notes about mine safety have been added to the Other Stuff page. If you have read about some of our trips to the mines, and think you want to get in on the action, make sure you read this, and other information about being safe in the outdoors. Some of our trip reports may portray a somewhat cavalier attitude towards what we are doing, but in reality, safety is our first concern. We are not particularly brave, and certainly not foolish.

02/07/2005
The Money Creek road is closed again, this time at the one mile mark. Just beyond the sign are jersey barriers. According to the Forest Road Conditions Report, the road is washed out at the 3.5 mile mark.

02/02/2005
We finally added the Kimball Creek Mines trip report. We had taken this trip last April after our Grand Central trip, but since we just looked around and didn't go in any mines, we didn't post a trip report. Well, now people can look at a few pictures of the area (which was interesting in it's own right). According to old mining survey maps, there was a lot of activity around that area, especially along the Kimball Creek drainage.

01/22/2005
Added the Damon & Pythias trip report finally. It has been a busy time of year trying to get that done. It really was a unique trip, hiking up in the snow! Hopefully we will be able to complete a mine tunnel map for it as well. Stay tuned.

01/18/2005
We added a new "Contact" page Here that will give people an option for using the little mail form to send us questions or comments via email. You need to provide a subject, email address and message, but the email address can be fake if you want. But then we won't be able to reply! Also fixing some problems with the website for the Opera browser.

11/1/2004
We added a trip report page for our Golden Tunnel mine trip in September. Unfortunately, we are going to keep this trip pretty much under wraps, and just show a couple pictures from our journey. We have decided that since this mine is such an enigma, we don't want to take anything away from others that are driven to find the mine and make the difficult journey.

10/25/2004
The Other Stuff page now has more pictures and the steps needed to create your own homemade windscreen for the Snowpeak Giga stove.

10/14/2004
Some confusion has been cleared up concerning the location of the Zeta Lode near the headwaters of Silver Creek, as originally shown in the Silver Queen Mines report. An old mining survey map showed the Zeta Lode approximately in the same location as the Seattle-Aurora (obviously a later effort) but running in the wrong direction. Several sources now indicate the Zeta Adit as being close by, but actually in a creek gully just west of the Twin Lakes trail. The trip report has been corrected, but the image names still reflect 'Zeta'. Maybe we'll get the real Zeta next year.

10/14/2004
The Sidney Mine Report shows some pictures from a trip with the Northwest Underground Explorations group. Since it was organized by them, we won't do a full blown trip report with our usual irrelevant facts and stories. The Sidney Mine is one of the short mines in 76 Gulch, near the Monte Cristo townsite. We also visited in a short while, the Sheridan and Liberty mines. 76 Gulch is home to many other mines and prospects, and was the first area that mining claims were established soon after the discovery by Peabody and Pearsall.

09/22/2004
Added the Silver Queen Mines report, the route page will come soon.

08/25/2004
Just added the trip report for the Justice Mine adventures. More trips have piled up, wow, we've been pretty busy. The Justice Route page will come later. Don't miss the Justice Mine Sketch Map. This shows what it's like inside the mine, at least the part we explored!

07/03/2004
Moved the now old 2003 trip reports from the Current Reports page to the archive of Earlier Reports. We did some good trips in 2003!

07/01/2004
Added the Kitanning Mine trip report. Also have done some work on the site with Style Sheets, and changes to support Mozilla.

05/21/2004
Added the Bergeson Prospect trip report. We did this and the Kitanning Mine on the same day.

04/19/2004
Don't plan on driving up the Money Creek road to the end for a while. Something happened there. We had heard about the washout, and decided to check it out. It is an amazing show of force by Mother Nature. The location is just after the 3 mile marker on the road (about 2.5 miles up from the concrete bridge.)

04/04/2004
Check out the Forest Service Holden Mine Cleanup page. Some really good old & new pictures of the mine and surrounding area, as well as some details on how they are cleaning up the environmental damage from this old copper mine near Lake Chelan.

03/23/2004
Now there are sections and more stuff in the Links page. There are so many hiking and climbing sites, it's hard to list them all. Please let us know if you think there are additional links that you think we would be interested in!

03/04/2004
Here is a downloadable template for creating a windscreen for the Snowpeak Giga stove. The homemade windscreen was created from a pie plate and the finished product only weighs 0.1 ounce.

03/03/2004
Just getting around to posting some trip reports from last summer, such as the Bald Eagle trip and Mineral Creek. We have been really busy I guess.

09/12/2003
Here is an interesting story about a search for the Imperial #2 mine in the Skykomish area.