August 12, 2012 Peru Creek

We added a few extra people to the exploration on the 12th.  My daughter Jaime, her husband Jered and their two girls joined us in their vintage 1980's something jeep. 

My brother in law Jeff Roberts and his son Brandon came along as well.  It was great to have them along.

That's Brandon riding lookout in the Sammi.  I think he loved the trip.

This journey started from Loveland pass off of I70 at the Eisenhower tunnel.  The pass is a paved road all the way and climbs to a breathtaking 12,000 feet (almost). (11990 according to the marker).

We stayed on the pavements all the way into the ski town of Keystone.  From there we wound around and made our way to Montezuma Road which we took only a few miles until we turned left just before the town of Montezuma on Forest Service road 260. 

For the most part the Peru Creek trail is considered an easy trail but the scenery is nevertheless outstanding.

One of the main reasons for taking these back country trips is to explore some of the old dwellings and man made structures that you find.  One of the places we were trying to get to was the old Pennsylvania gold mine.  In the photo below if you look real hard you will see two building off across the valley.  The large lower one is the Pennsylvania Mill where the rock was milled down to find the gold and silver ore.  The building up the side of the mountain, just at tree line is the mine.  There are ruins of an old tram that run between the mine at the top and the mill at the bottom.

We made our way over to the mill and did some exploring around it.  I've always wished I could somehow look through a time portal and go back to the time when these kinds of places were in operation so I could figure out what they did, what all the contraptions were for and see how life was when these places were at their prime.  Fun places to explore and wonder about.

After exploring the mill the next stop was up the hill to the mine.

If you look real close you can see a wooden tower just below the upper building.  There are ruins of a few of them between the upper building and the mill.  It looks like they were supports for a tram of some kind to get the ore from the mine up above to the mill down below.  But that's only a guess.  I don't have that time portal I've always wanted.

Actually, I'm not so sure what the building on top really is.  I don't think it is the actual mine, there is no opening into the side of the mountain there.  I'm thinking it was used to put the ore in to send it down to the mill.  Mayby a historian would know that answer.  To me it is a mystery I suppose but it was our next stop and the highest you can get with a vehicle.



The view down the valley from up here is something else.  I wonder what the winters were like though.  This is the edge of the tree line. Somewhere around 12,000 feet give or take depending on which side of the moutain you are standing on.  But tree line is usually caused by where the weather is too harsh for trees to survive.

There was one last stop on the Peru creek trail before we were done.  After making our way down from the top of Pennsylvania mine we continued to the end of the road up Peru creek to the Shoe Basin mine.  Very colorful, mineral filled water running out of the mouth of the mine makes it look like a very frightening thing to explore.  I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.  I've seen too many movies of cave-ins.  Interesting to look at nevertheless.