Welcome Welcome!
Welcome to where I will now be posting what I write and stuff. I put almost everything on Eispiraten.com but now I want to put it here.
About Me
Back when I was a kid, my dad would take my brother and I into Eaton Canyon to hike around and explore. As we grew older, we would go on incresingly more difficult hikes, eventually leading to backpacking trips. My dad would always tell us how impressed he was that even at our young ages, we were doing things that others couldn't do. I feel like this motivation at a young age combined with my disinterest in normal young kid sports and activities led me to more mountain history stuff. Around 2011, my uncle told my brother and I about his mine explorations above Altadena during his youth. He mentioned some flooded mines where he would put a candle on a stray piece of timber and float it down the flooded mine. One weekend, he took us up to Dawn Mine in upper Millard canyon which has an incredible waterfall deep inside it and some cool drifts and open stopes. This was the first time I learned about the existence of mines in the San Gabriel Mountains so a door was opened for me.
The year was 2014 and I was halfway through my freshman year of high school when I discovered the website, "lagoldmines.com" which was written by a gentleman named Hugh Blanchard. Mr. Blanchard spent the last years of his life researching, excavating, and documenting the various lost mines of the San Gabriel mountains, most of which hadn't been seen since their active days. The website was the gateway to many other local historians into the ultra niche history of mining in the San Gabriels and specific to me, the mining history of Altadena. A guy named Bryant Bohorquez aka "BrotherBVideos" on YouTube, was making videos of some of the mines in Las Flores Canyon and Pine Canyon, all from the original research of Mr. Blanchard. I started exploring Las Flores Canyon, Pine Canyon, and a few other minor tributaries above Altadena and discovered the mines from the blog posts, as well as new ones that I excavated! Between the forum Eispiraten, some youtube channels, and other friends I made through my research, I was able to excavate and document more lost mines.
From my now 12 years of exploring the San Gabriel Mountains, I finally have decided to consolidate all my reports and research to this one site. A lot of what you'll find here isn't mine history related, but is actually just my various other projects.