Canyon Birthday Celebration

The entire par­ty! I’m way on the right with the red hel­met in the dark!

Head­lamps glowed while gear was being shuf­fled about on an oth­er­wise calm res­i­den­tial street in Altade­na Cal­i­for­nia. It was dark and we looked for a place to park. There was a group of peo­ple on the cor­ner while oth­ers went through their trunks sort­ing through gear. A few neigh­bors wan­dered about per­plexed by all this unusu­al commotion.

“What are you guys here for” a guy said to me through an open car win­dow as he backed out of his dri­ve­way. “Are you part of an orga­ni­za­tion?” “No, we are just friends. We’re going on a night hike. It’s my birth­day.” “Wow, you’ve got a lot of friends” he said. We talked for a few min­utes about the local hik­ing and then I pro­ceed­ed to walk toward anoth­er neigh­bor wan­der­ing around ques­tion­ing­ly. His trash cans had been moved and he was under­stand­ably upset. “I put them right here and now they are gone!” There was a white Maz­da in place of his trash cans. I had no idea how the trash cans could be miss­ing. I mean some­one did­n’t put them in their trunk or some­thing. Soon his wife was out of the house and the 3 of us were walk­ing up and down the block search­ing for the miss­ing trash cans.

Not find­ing the trash cans after some search­ing I even­tu­al­ly gave up  and decid­ed to head out. After all it was my birth­day and we had a canyon planed, a short one albeit. Who am I kid­ding we all came here to par­ty in the canyon! And I was the only one who knew the route.

As I got to the end of the street I looked back and chuck­led to myself. He was wheel­ing his trash cans down from his house. Hmmm some­one does­n’t have the great­est mem­o­ry. I’m just glad he did­n’t call the cops…or garbage police on us.

Night canyon­ing has become com­mon­place for our group over the past few years. Some­thing to look for­ward to dur­ing the work week, keep tech­ni­cal skills fresh, socialize…canyon carous­ing! Tonight 27 head­lamps bobbed down the trail over the back­drop of the twin­kling city lights, down­town LA in the dis­tance. The  largest night canyon trip to date!

The first rap­pel was a short one of about 25 feet and down-climbable by some. We anchored off a small tree and down every­one went. Slow­ly but sure­ly the 27 of us made it down. I wait­ed until the end so now I was at the back of the group. I rushed down the canyon try­ing to catch up, lag­ging behind at my own cel­e­bra­tion. What a site it is to look down on a canyon par­ty, and then rap­pel into the party!

This canyon is unique, in that there is a decent sized gold mine in it. In fact you can see the entrance to this mine (Sur­prise Mine) in the pic­ture above (upper mid­dle left). Neil and Jes­si­ca are stand­ing in the entrance. Now the orig­i­nal plan was to set-up inside the mine, at the junc­tion where the tun­nels branch off, but as it turns out our group was too large and it would’ve been too cramped. But we still walked through the mine, all 477 feet of it!

Here is a pic­ture from inside the mine tak­en on a pre­vi­ous trip.

At the end of Sur­prise Mine in Pine Canyon

We sat around for the next few hours eat­ing, drink­ing, lis­ten­ing to music and telling sto­ries. Some from Jane of dead bod­ies her and Mark have found in Big Tujun­ga and a few from me of canyon trips.

Enjoy­ing a con­coc­tion from the Aer­i­al Bartender

It was a great way to spend my 32nd Birthday!

More infor­ma­tion on the mine(s) can be found here: http://www.lagoldmines.com/index.php?page=845364.txt

These great pho­tos pho­tos (unless oth­er­wise indi­cat­ed) were tak­en by Floris Van Breugel. Check out his web­site:  http://www.artinnaturephotography.com/