The Abandoned Mine

It was the fifth abandoned mine we had found that spring...

We started a bit late one day, and it was almost six before we arrived at the spot. It would be dark by eight, so we had limited time to explore. We went straight to the gully where the "mystery campsite" had been. I had expected that the grocery bag would rot in the sun and fall out of the tree, and sure enough it was laying in the pine needles in shreds.

Then we saw the cans. The vegetable juice cans were torn open, with obvious tooth holes. A bear had eaten almost everything (probably cutting himself in the process). Some bags from the boxed meals were still there - also with tooth marks. The only thing that was still intact was a can of peaches which had rolled under the edge of a boulder.

Ben saw the pants and picked them up. They were also bitten and chewed, as was the jacket. The shirt was on the ground up the gully a short distance away. We checked all the pockets in the clothing. Nothing. The tablecloth was disintegrating on the ground nearby, and the label had worn off on the only cough medicine bottle left. We couldn't tell if the empty beer bottle next to the shirt was related to the rest of the things. Hunters and others frequent the area, and a fire ring surrounded by many broken bottles and beer cans was only fifty yards away in a clearing.

We followed the gully up for a while, then stopped to decide which way to go. "Well,' Ben said, I would go up towards those rocks." I agreed that whatever caught our attention was likely to have caught the attention of whomever was here before. Hiking turned into climbing as we got onto the rocks. From the top of one of the rock formations we could see the hillsides below. The leaves weren't on the trees yet here at 9,000 feet, so we probably would have seen any large or bright pieces of clothing. Nothing.

Higher seemed better, both for spotting anything unusual and just for enjoying the scenery and rocks. The fun of climbing around up there became our primary focus. As often happens, we were drawn on by another interesting cliff or rock formation, and then another. It was becoming obvious we would be getting back late, so I pulled the cell phone out of my pack and called my wife. This was the first time I had ever gotten a signal in Phantom Canyon.

"Be careful," Ana reminded me before hanging up. As I put the phone away, I heard Ben muttering something about dead men and their wheel barrows. I followed his gaze down the hill to the wheel barrow and hard hat laying below. The tailings pile caught my eye, and I knew we had found yet another mine. Unlike ones found in previous weeks, though, this one might still be active. The wheelbarrow didn't look that old.

I hurried ahead and a moment later was standing in front of a mine entrance. An abandoned mine? We weren't sure. Ben was looking at the food wrappers and a bottle of dish washing detergent that was half full and laying on the ground. "It's used to separate out the gold," he explained. There were plastic pipes around as well, and a hose leading into the mine.

Careful not to disturb anything, we took out a flashlight and went into the mine. It ended about forty feet back. We saw no fresh tracks in or around the mine, so we concluded that nobody had been there this season yet. It was difficult to say if it had been longer than that. It may have been a couple years since anyone was here. I picked up the hard hat and inside it saw "Jim C" in permanent marker.

What looked like a white arrow had been painted on the ground, pointing off into the woods. We went in that direction for fifty feet or less and saw nothing of interest. It was getting too late to go any further. It was time to head back down to the car. We saw the old trail the miner had used and followed it.]

"I think these are connected," Ben said.

"You mean this and the camp site down there?"

"Exactly." It was true that the trail eventually followed the same gully that the campsite was in. But in what way would the mine and that be connected? We speculated on a few different theories. Perhaps the miner came late one night and camped below, planning to go up in the morning. But then why didn't he just sleep in his car? And why did he leave the food in a tree? It didn't quite fit.

Ben had a theory about the miner coming down sick, but I didn't think he would give up a hundred yards from the road and camp. Unless someone was coming to pick him up.

We looked at the clothes again when we reached them. They were too nice for either a regular camper or a miner. None of our theories seemed to fit all the facts very well. We thought about the possibility that the food and the clothes were unconnected, or that the miner and the site were not connected.

Ben took the can of peaches. The expiration date was November of 2006. I had been there a couple months before that the first time. I pointed out that usually the cans in the store have an expiration a year or two away, and the bag of food had looked like it was bought for that particular camping/drug trip. In other words, the expiration date suggested that the campsite was older than I thought. Perhaps it was from 2005 even.

The mine may not have been visited since that time as well, Ben pointed out. It was difficult to say, but it clearly hadn't been visited since before winter. Did that suggest a possible connection again or not?

It was getting dark as we drove towards home. Theories bounced back and forth between us, with none of them to satisfying. There was no traffic on the road, but an older gentleman on a bicycle caught our attention. We stopped to see if he needed help. He just asked how far we thought it was to Victor. He had given up at about the same place that we had been parked, and now was putting on a headlamp as he pedaled back the last twenty miles to town. We talked, and Ben and I forgot about the mystery for a while as we pondered this man who was going to pedal twenty more miles tonight in a dark canyon.

Only later did it occur to me that the man went just as far as we had been, and he had a headlamp. Was he on his way to the mine perhaps, and then turned around when he saw the car there? On a bicycle? That would explain camping rather than sleeping in a car. Could this, the same day we went there, have been coincidentally the first time he was back since before winter, or since the night of the mystery camp years before?

Not likely at all. Our imaginations run wild with theories when there aren't quite enough facts to make sense of something. This was the third mystery we had encountered in Phantom Canyon so far this spring (the others involved a trail to nowhere cut through the trees, and a mine or cave high in the face of a cliff, with no way to access it). We also had found four other mines. We kept returning for more adventure.

Maybe it is better if some mysteries are never solved. But of course we might revisit that abandoned mine before the summer is over.