Iris was up for an extended weekend so on Saturday we went climbing in the gorge, Sunday we hiked up Keough Peak to tag another bump and up to a mine to explore, Monday we hid from the bitter cold wind and bundled up for some mountain biking.
02 02 2020 - a palindrome date. We first did a loop hike up Keough Peak - a small bump on a ridge near Keough Hot Spring. The views of the Owens Valley were pretty nice. We could see some dust starting to be blown up. There was a pretty sharp cold front blowing in. This little jaunt was about 2.3 miles and 1,200 ft of elevation gain.
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Then we drove as far as I felt comfortable up a dirt road and did a 10 point turn and parked. I had been up this way once before but it was on my bicycle so I could go farther. Then we hiked a fair bit up the road and into Shannon Canyon on a sometimes very wet road/trail up to an old mine. We poked around in it for a while and took some pics. There were shafts we didn't explore, but we did see some interesting minerals (mostly garnet, epidote, and calcite I think) as well as what looked like some old cave walls and old mining bits and pieces. Last time I was here there were bats too, but maybe they don't hang around for the winter. The temperature in the mine was about the same as outside when we went in (50?) but as we returned to the outside it was noticeably colder. We hike back down the canyon until we were back on the dirt road and jogged the rest of the way back to the truck in the dark. This ended up being about 5 miles and 1,450 ft of gain.
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A little poking around on the internet suggests this was a tungsten mine operated during WWII with grossular garnet, epidote, and scheelite present. There was mica too, since there was one picture of a mica sample that was from this area and I saw some in the mine.
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