Winter Interlude: Dawn Mine

During those years of living in Pasadena and then Alhambra, we did hikes in the area of the Dawn Mine, I did mountain bike rides in the area of the Dawn Mine, but never did we, or I, go to the Dawn Mine. Well, keeping this whole mine exploration thing of the past year going, I now get to check that one off the list. While there were plenty of mountain bikers up there, riding the Mt Lowe / Echo Mountain area, the trail that branches off and heads up the canyon bottom to the mine is not bikeable, so I knew this interlude would be exclusively a hike.

on a clear day you can see Los Angeles

lengths of old iron pipe snake down canyon, remnants of a system delivering fresh mountain water to Pasadena

an old ore cart washed down from the mine

And a beautiful hike it was, boulder hoping along the canyon bottom, stream crossings beneath giant alders, green ferns growing out of the rock walls, small cascading waterfalls and cool, clear pools. Someone has done some recent work and, as a result, the trail is in fantastic condition. Additionally, and considering how close this is to the city, the area is surprisingly free of graffiti - the scrawl of some racist idiot marking up the two i-beams supporting an old pump at the mine was it.

Named for Dawn Ehrenfeld, the mine operated off and on between 1895 and the 1950s, various owners taking just enough gold out of its tunnels to keep them hoping for more. Three tunnel portals survive (a fourth was destroyed by the Forest Service); the "lower tunnel," outside of which sits an old water pump is a split tunnel with a total distance of about 680 feet, while an upper tunnel located about fifty vertical feet above the lower is about 196 feet long. Both of those were sealed with heavy steel barriers in 2017. Another, shorter tunnel about a five minute walk up the canyon from the lower tunnel remains open; its headwall is about fifty feet straight back from the portal, not terribly exciting, though there is some mineralization occurring at the end, which in several hundred years might make for some far out formations.

There is interesting stuff to see out there, and though it may be a bit heretical to say, sometimes the best thing to do is leave the bike behind and go it afoot. More photos in the album, and have a good weekend ya'll.

too beefy to be from the mine, I suspect it is from the Mt. Lowe Railway