Fall is coming
Luckily we had a couple of days of good rain last week and they’ve lifted the ban on accessing the backwoods. THat means I can hike the trails again which is exactly what I did today. It’s that magic time of the year where you still have some of the vibrant greens of summer but tempered with the first hints of what’s coming. I love moss and lichens, which is a good thing becausewe have lots of both around here 
There’s a point on this one trail I take where you pass through a moonscape - nothing but broken up ore, huge piles of rock taken out of the mines to get at the gold. Right where that stretch ends and you start yor descent back into the woods and headed back to town htere is an old rock wall hidden by bushes. For a long time I thought it was the remaining wall of a mine manager’s house or something - it is on the former site of the biggest and most productive mine on the mountain. However today I noticed a small trail running along its base and I decided to follow that trail. It didn’t go far but it showed me a way to get to the top of that wall.
Where I discovered that it was part of the foundation for some large mine machinery , now long gone, but definitely not a house. But there was treasure there nevertheless.
Above are some large ore cars laying on their sides - too big to remove as a memento for someones yard and a large bundle of cable in surprisingly good condition considering it has been laying there since at least 1928 when the last mine was shutdown, and that it gets buried under 10 or 15 feet of snow each winter.
There are so many old roads and paths on this mountain - lots of fun to explore
