images from a wet exploration

I somehow got convinced to spend a rainy Saturday poking around some "mines" in the Keyesville area with a semi-professional mine explorer and one of my triathlon-geology colleagues. I then convinced another colleague to come along too so that I would have less driving to do. It turned out that 1) the first "mine" was, in my eyes, not a mine at all; was quite filled with water, which for the height-challenged such as myself, meant getting a greater percentage of the body wet to explore; and contained at least 2 dead rodents: Bloaty McBloaterson and Fluffy, 2) the second mine was clearly a mine, and also clearly had Jarosite (and indubitably other sulfur-based minerals and bacteria growing in it, or some such stuff that was also off-gassing when the murky waters were disturbed), which resulted in an incredibly nasty sludge coating on our footwear.

Me, pouting, with my bra stuffed with my socks so that they would at least be dry, other stuff shoved into my fleece, my pants rolled up to my thighs, but still wet, and looking at the partial ladder that needed to be climbed in order to proceed; with its lowest rung being the height of my shoulder...

Irony. Rusted "iron"y. That might be the worst pun I've ever made...

Clean vertical shaft in the mine, unlike the other 2 we saw, which were rendered nearly invisible due to the rusty sludge coating (see above photo for sludge example) - but this one looked eerily awesome. It also made a fantastic sound when rocks were lobbed into it. The other shafts made cool sounds when rocks were tossed their way, but also sent replies in the form of potent H2S farts, we heard the message and trucked it out of there.

The following night and day was spent in my old favourite, Red Rock Canyon SP, where a full moon and relatively wind-free evening allowed for flash-light free night hikes to check out the few constellations that shone out against the brightness of the moon, as well as catching the last few stragglers of the Leonid meteor shower.