Unexpected findings on our hike to the Twin Lode mine in the Whipple Mountains Wilderness

We spent 11 days hiking in the area of the Whipple Wash, in the Whipple Mountains Wilderness, and then one day hiking in the area of Wyatt Earp's Lucky Day mine in the south part of the wilderness.

Now we are camping on the west side of the wilderness, off of the old Parker to Needles Wagon Road, which is another gravel road in this area listed as needing 4-wheel drive. Glad we have it!

Here we are:

You can see our camper in the next two photos too if you have a magnifying glass:

 

From our campsite we hiked into the wilderness area to explore it, and to see if we could locate the Twin Lode mine.

The first thing we found was that the sign indicating the boundary of the wilderness had been torn off and thrown high into a pile of rocks. We had been told at BLM offices that they'd basically give up keeping the signage because so many people just drive right over the signs indicating that no motorized vehicles are allowed. What is with people anyway? Or, some of them.

So we retrieved it and put it back up. Can't hurt.

We hiked farther up the mining road and found the mine.

We just look in mines. We don't go into them.

After leaving the mine, we identified some other old roads, and followed one. It ended in a wash that we had to scramble through. On a mesa above the wash we found this:

 

So what was it?

I think Vicky nailed it. It was a very old decorative shale business. There was a lot of shale around there, and it is likely it was stacked on the palates for carrying out. The strange display I am looking at might have been some sort of aid for helping the diggers identify the kinds of pieces that were being sought. It is as good of a story as we could come up with. Got a better one?

It raises the question once again for us as to what constitutes historical artifacts and what constitutes garbage. Should this stuff be left in an official Wilderness Area?

We left the old roads at this point and started hiking across country. We wanted to see if we could make a large loop trail out of our hike today. This is always something fun we like to try to discover.

With the aid of our GPS (and we would never attempt making our own trails without a GPS), we climbed and descended some hills in the general direction of our camper. We reached the top of one hill and saw, in the distance, that there was someone either camping or rock hounding in a small valley hidden from the road. There appeared to be two off-road vehicles there, from what we could make out at a distance.

Out of politeness, we skirted that area as best we could. But when we looked closely, something was clearly wrong about the scene.

There was an off road dune buggy type vehicle there, but it had been abandoned. With the keys still in it! And the other vehicle was a toy jeep, probably battery powered at one time, also with its "key" still in it. Nothing else around. Why was it left there? It had been trashed, but it would seem that some parts would have been salvageable. And according to our maps it is not on any kind of private property. Even Vicky couldn't come up with a good theory about this strange site. We did wonder whether there might have been a story in the newspaper 20 years ago about a family going missing after leaving for the California desert in their dune buggy. Was there?

This photo gives you an idea of how remote the place we found these two "treasures" was. Again you may need a magnifying glass.

Another fun hike. As with 95%+ of our hikes, we saw not a single other soul. Just the two of us in the beauty of nature.

 

 

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