Silver Bell, Golden Bell, and El Dorado Mine Hike

 

Another hiking day combining trail finding with trail making. 

We began with an easy climb to a mine that is listed on one of the Exhibits on the main road through Joshua Tree National Park.  The Silver Bell mine is perched on the top of a hill overlooking the valley.  

We hiked there and poked around.   One place seemed to be a person’s little shack, built into the side of the hill for comfort.  At one time there was a small window in the side, which is why we believed it was a place a person built to sleep in.

 

In case you are wondering--yes, Vicky really did carry the extension ladder with her up the hill.  It is one of the Mountaineer's 10 essentials.

All we could figure is that the Park service decided it would be better to just provide a ladder to keep people from climbing all over the structure.  But it was an odd thing to discover.

 Then, off to our East, we saw tailings from another mine, which we read was the Golden Bell Mine.  Our hiking book indicated that travel to it is not recommended, so of course off we went across the mountainside to see it.

It didn’t look very far, that is until we started hiking.  There was no trail—we were traveling across a large hillside that had several hidden ravines. 

Hiking very carefully and very slowly we finally made it.  The mine was interesting, and as the book said, the shafts are still open, and dangerous.  Why some shafts in the park have been closed and others left open is not clear to us.  

But what was clear is that not many people have hiked to this place.

This photo shows how far we had to traverse the side of the large hills.  From the Golden Bell mine, the route looks almost impossible—but it looked easier, deceptively so, from where we started (the Silver Bell mine).  We traveled along the side of the hills fro the far left to the far right of this photo:

Then, we went down the other side of the mountain to a wash, which we took to the end.  Then we traveled about ½ mile south to another wash where, yet another ½ mile away, was the El Dorado mine.  It was another large mine with several remaining structures.  It can be seen up the wash about 1/2 mile away from where Vicky is sitting (where we had lunch):

 

One thing you can say about miners is that they were not good with recycling.  There must be thousands and thousands of rusty tin cans in the park.  It was SOOOO tempting to take one and bring it home as a souvenir, but we didn’t, of course.  

Another day where our mileage (6.1) or elevation gain (1000) wasn’t so great, but the energy expenditure was much greater because we had to create our own trails.  And what fun once again.