A Very Late Start of the Jeep Season

Today is July 4th and I am finally out Jeeping again. I guess I should be thankful that I can still do it, but I need to have these hospital issues in the winter, not the spring. So, I decided to hit Erickson Pass, which is between the Simpson Mountains and the Sheeprock Mountains. It has a sign saying 4 wheel drive is needed, high clearance, etc. No it doesn't. If it was wet, yes you would need it, but on a hot July day, all you need is air conditioning. Yes, even with the top off it works while you are following the trails. So, besides a "tough trail", I was looking for a few mines that happen to be in the area. Our first choice was the Clinger mine located on the west side of the Sheeprocks. We typed it into the GPS and away we went. The Garmin guided us right to the mine and we hiked maybe 30 yards up the hill to see it. Above you will see our host of the mine. He was kinda shy and scampered off as we got closer. 

The view looking towards the Simpsons was a lot better than our mine find. We found a lot of tailings and expected something actually worth visiting. But our high hopes were crushed to dust by what we found.

We found the dreaded government marker that shows that this mine was "fixed" so you can not enjoy it as it was. Bastards. It almost looks like a placer mine. Someone found and interesting spot with potential and went strait down. In the area, there are a lot of huge mounds of rock sitting above the surface. This mine looks to have been dug at the base of a rock or they blasted into the rock itself. No idea at this point. I did notice maybe 30' down the hill a metal pipe sticking out of the ground and appeared to be solid. It might have been an air line into the mine or vent or something. So from the tailings pile, I believe this one was pretty deep, until they blasted it. Bastards. 

My grandnephew? decided he wanted to Jeep today to so I brought him along as a navigator. Being that this mine sucked balls, we headed out to another area and disaster stuck. The damn GPS decided not to work anymore. I am hoping it was because the batteries were going dead. It had no clue where we were so we kinda gave up on the search. Not wanting to disappoint him, we headed over the the Simpson range and Flinders Road. As we climbed up the canyon we ran into a truck with a mangled tire. We stopped to help the guy but Jeep spares don't match up to Toyota spares. So our solution was for him to call a friend for assistance. Gotta love a satellite phone. Sad thing was his friend wont answer unknown numbers, neither do I, so all we could do was leave a message. He has a cabin right there so he wasn't in any real predicament. We hung for a half hour then moved on. We hit Death Canyon next and went to the first open mine on the left side of the road. Wanna know something funny? The Toyota guy owns that mine. So, we were actually authorized to enter the mine and explore. I took Rusty in for a ways and explained the hows and whys and then we headed for home. Twas a good day to get out of the city. I am going to order new super batteries for the GPS and head back to find the other mines we couldn't. Jeep on my friends!