Ghost Hunting: Our 3400' Ascent

We got into Cornucopia in the early afternoon and set out on a very steep mining road up into the Wallowas. Occasionally we got to walk on some nice packed dirt, but for the most part the road was entirely composed of smooth, large stones, which were geologically interesting but a bitch to walk on.

I did not expect cows, especially cows that were mooing loudly. These were domestic cows, set free to range over the mountains. I didn't know that one did that with cows. The guy in the green is Eric. He was on point for the whole afternoon.	Carpenter ants did this. A fearsome demonstration of the power of organized labour.	Some foliage that fascinated Jerry.
We're getting higher. You can see the road switching back; it's the light grey stripe at the centre-bottom of the shot.	..and higher. It's kind of frustrating, trying to shoot these gorgeous landscapes with no skill and a cheap camera. I wished I was Ansel Adams so many times during this day.	Eric investigates the first mine site we came across, about 45 minutes up.
	It's tough to see, but the floor has buckled upwards.	And still higher.
Lunch.	The second mining facility we ran across. This one's of a more recent vintage. The electric wiring is all three-prong, and the joists and rafters were all labelled like Ikea furniture. Prefab construction materials are a modern innovation, says Jerry.	This narrow-gauge rail track ran out from the mineshaft (the right side building in the picture at left) and alongside a gully...
...where waste rock (tailings, right?) from the mine would be dumped.	At some point, the miners hit water. The mineshaft is now a babbling brook. Jerry panned for gold here for a few minutes, and didn't find anything.	Here we see how much studlier Jerry's flash is than mine. (though mine did manage to light up the grue at the end of this tunnel.)
The covered section of the shaft, seen from the ridge above. The outbuilding to the right had a table in it, but no remarkable artifacts.	L-R: Eric's elbow, the pool beneath the mine's brook, those mine tailings mentioned above.	And further up yet. See the gray vertical line that's slightly left of centre? That's the chimney of the mansion we were looking for. We missed it on the way up, somehow.
Here's more ascent landscapes. This stuff was absolutely seductive to me, so I shot a ton of it.
Looking up, for a change.
At this point, we'd resolved to follow the road until we found a summit or ran out of time. The road ended on a deer trail that skirted the side of a hill. Eric followed the deer trail upwards a few more feet, and discovered the summit--or at least, what would serve as the summit for our non-climbing-gear equipped selves.
Eric waits at the summit for us. He is one zippy dude.	Jerry sets out up the deer trail after Eric.	The summit. To my right is the deer-trail hill. To my left is a very sharp descent of a few thousand feet, which I glimpsed for the first time as I was dashing up the deer trail. I'm not the steadiest guy on my feet, so I was content to stay squatted close to the nice, solid ground.
Jerry, however, went further, onto a very unforgiving perch. Wish I could have this shot back-- my hands were shaking a bit on account of the height.	Jerry took some nice pictures while he was out there.	Like this one. This rise is behind my back in the picture directly above.
This one, too.	I was very happy once we left the summit and returned to nice, forgiving land.	We went back down the mountain, stopping to see the mansion. Man, what a pain it must have been to haul all the construction materials up this mountain. Of course, I guess people were probably used to hauling heavy shit up and down that crappy road, it being mining country and all.
The chimney. What a nice guy.	I'm still feeling the effects of the summit, and am trying to keep my centre of gravity low.	Leftover wood abounds. We also found a rusted old steel range top.
There were birds in this chimney. Victoria could hear them.	We saw this rusted steam boiler on the way down. There was no sign of the machine it belonged to. Perhaps the boiler cracked and was discarded here while the rest of the machine was towed away for repair.	The water would run through all those pipes as the fire burned around it. The idea, I think, was to maximize the surface area of the water-fire interface.
Eric and Victoria toast our triumphant return with watermelons.

The final statistics, according to Eric's keen government maps: we climbed 3400 feet (from 4800' to 8200') in six miles. That's about a 10% grade, averaged out. It left us dead tired. We crawled back to Baker City, where we showered, had a pizza, and then convinced the nice girl at the hotel to open up the hot tub for an after-hours soak.

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