By Bike and By Hike: To the Falcon Mine

February 20, 2021

By Bike and By Hike: To the Falcon Mine

The problem with starting a ride at the summit end is that you gotta finish with a climb. Now, that isn't necessarily bad, but when the climb is 20% and more, and the wind is howling worse than a thousand big bad wolves, that ride is going to quickly turn from bike to hike. I suppose I could have waited for a less windy day, but that twenty plus percent grade was never going to be anything other than nigh impossible.

The summit in this case was the Mill Creek Summit off the Angeles Forest Highway. The trailhead was Pony Park(ing Lot) up behind the fire station. The road was the 4N18, aka Loop F of the Rabbit Peak Hay - I don't know what HAY stands for, but I suspect it has something to do with the power transmission lines that the road roughly follows. Take the 4N18 far enough and it does indeed take you to Rabbit Peak, not to mention a bunch more mines which might make for some good explorations in the future.

This day, though, the Falcon Mine would prove to be plenty; honestly I can't envision any way in which 4.2 miles could be more thoroughly exhausting. Push a bike does have a way of wearing into you and, though she didn't ask, when I suggested to the mrs. that we switch bikes (hers is considerably heavier) she accepted the idea. By that time we had lost 30% of our hearing due to the abuse of that incessant wind:

"..I hear you singing in the wire

I can hear you through the whine..."

Those lines were singing alright, whining too. They alternately sounded like an army wielding leaf blowers or a squadron of fighter jets screaming across the sky. I swear I think it started to play with my mind; when the wind slowed just enough to turn into a whistle I am convinced I heard the theme from the Andy Griffith Show.

The Falcon Mine dates all the way back to 1877, the year a claim was first staked on its lonely canyon location, but anything you will see there today littering the ground are of more recent origin - the Los Angeles Times ran an article about the reopening of the mine in 1986. Those remains include the half buried hulks of rusted vehicles, the back end of a utility truck (rusted, of course), rusting steel tanks, including some big ones with "hazardous fluid" labels still on them, rusting tin cans, rusting pipes, nuts and bolts, rusting pieces of unidentified machinery, rusting ore cart rails, rusting wheelbarrows, and rock. I think the rock may be the only evidence of the areas' mining activity more numerous than the plethora of rusting metal. I brought home a camelbak full of those rocks, mostly quartz, some with crystals in them, but I left all that rusted stuff behind.

For all that I never did make it to a single adit (mine opening). I do believe we scrambled up a slope over a collapsed adit (the lowest one in the canyon. A little further up canyon I scrambled up a tailing at the top of which were a matched pair of ore cart rails. The other end of those rails disappeared into a bank of heavy brush, impenetrable by virtue of the covering of branches ending in extremely sharp points. I am thinking the rails must have led to an adit, but will need to review the one YouTube video about the mine that I watched for some kind of confirmation. A quite nice and well-defined trail led up canyon past a waterfall with a trickle of slimy water to where most of the adits would be, but the mrs. was done and ready for lunch, so further exploration will have to be made in the future. Incidentally, we did pass through a locked gate (whether locked by some claim "owner" or, more likely, the Forest Service, I don't know), and up by the presumed collapsed adit there was a wooden sign fallen over, and with a bit of decomposed mylar notice on it; I could make out the word "claim" on what remained, but little else. Clearly no one has worked this mine for a considerable number of years, the only visitors to the place recently, are likely to have been hikers / mine explorers and, perhaps, hunters.

Anyway, the adventure was an interesting one, worth the effort, but next time I think I do it as a hike only and scour the canyon sides until I find an open adit, of which there are apparently several.