Ghosts of the Past: The Simpson Mine (Part 3)

 Happy Halloween! 

Continuing from the last blog entry, this is the same room I showed the newspaper article. I am standing with my back to where the newspaper was.

A room nearby that had some beds in it. One thing to think about is how did these people live during the winter?! There were heaters used, but being up at almost ten thousand feet on a mountain side can be very cold. I walked around these rooms and some were pitch black and spooky. You can see what I am talking about if you watch the video.

These buildings had more machinery in them for use with the mine.

For example, this is what is in the building above:

I do not recall the gate being up last time I was there. I believe this has been added to keep people away from the mining hole that appeared to be collapsing some and sinking...the best I can describe it...from last time I was there.

Okay! I want to emphasize that this series of blogs about this mine was to build to this GoPro video. It is long at about 23 minutes. So you might want to save it until you have the right time to watch it all at once. If you have a fast connection, can watch it at 4K on a bigger TV screen, then I would suggest turning off the lights and enjoy. Originally, I had music playing through most of the video, but decided it did not work. So, I hope you enjoy this video as much as I did making it:

The Ghost Mine Above Lee Vining 2.0 (Youtube)

I will keep the prior video up which might be a good thing seeing how this one had a different weather condition to it. Tomorrow I will link to an unlisted video for the drive down. My unlisted videos are sort of "throw away" videos that I put up as extras, but do not put as much time into nor care as much about. Kind of like Blu-Rays or Dvds that have extras on them.

Ghosts of the Past: The Simpson Mine (Part 2)

 Continuing my "Ghosts" series with part two of the Simpson Mine. In the past most of my pictures were showing the exteriors of the mine. This time I wanted to show more of the insides of the structures. 

The following building is the lower building of two others. This structure is connected by stairs.

As you can see here the stairs lead into darker rooms. The first room is a bathroom and shower area. 

Then after some more stairs there are a bunch of open rooms. 

I assume that this would be living quarters or recreation rooms for some of the workers. 

The following is in a totally different building below than this building I am showing, but it has an odd story. I ran across this newspaper from circa 1990ish someone appeared to be reading. 

It was a twilight zone moment for me because it was talking about a high school game three hundred miles away near my home. At where I am typing this out right now I am within walking distance of both the schools and the stadium it was played out. It is always weird to me when two things that appear to have no connection to each other create a coincidence like that. 

This is the room I found the paper in. The newspaper was being used, by that article above was put aside as if someone was reading it. The Twilight Zone theme was playing in my head.

Again, if you have want to watch the drive to the mine go here:

Offroad Drive (Ascending Log Cabin Mine Road)

I will continue this in Part 3 tomorrow. 

Ghosts of the Past: The Simpson Mine (Part 1)

We are a few days within Halloween so I decided to get this part up of the "Ghosts of the Past" series. Again, this is another area I have shown on this blog before. The emphasis is really on the GoPro video that will be public on Oct. 31st., but I do have a lot of pictures I want to show so let's go...

I have talked about the history of the Simpson mine before so I will not do that here, but link to a blog I did before that talks about it below. The deal with this mine it is on a mountain above the town of Lee Vining and Mono Lake. It is really isolated, and the time I was there I was the only one exploring the mine. Getting to the mine is difficult because you do need a 4-wheel drive or high clearance vehicle. This year was a little tougher because of the snow melt that made the roads a lot messier at certain places.

When I arrived the weather was overcast, and it would start raining on the way down. I was sort of disappointed at the time, but then realized it would probably be the best atmosphere for a Halloween video. I walked down the road and soon came across the main structure of the mine.

Turning to my right:

The following pictures emphasize part of the main structure:

Notice the part of the structure that is lifted up:

This would be the inside. In the video I walk all the way up and back. I was careful, but wondered how dangerous it really was. It appeared safe for what I do. Standard disclaimer that I am not responsible for what others do. If someone does go up this thing make sure someone else is nearby. 

I walked further down the road. There is a series of buildings that are connected on the left side that I entered. That will be the next blog entry.

One of things I did was take GoPro video of the drive up to the mine. This video is almost twenty minutes long. It covers just about all of the drive except for a minute or so. If you are into offroad driving videos here it is:

Offroad Drive (Ascending Log Cabin Mine Road)

The Ghost Mine Above Lee Vining (Blog with the history of the Simpson Mine)

Ghosts of the Past: Flying Over Chemung Mine

 This is a follow up to the last blog entry. Like my GoPro footage, this was my first attempt using my Anafi drone two years ago a little more seriously than I had been. When I first got this drone I would fly it straight up, take a few pictures, take some video without going too far away, then come down. My emphasis was on taking pictures, and my concern was losing the drone if I flew too far away. At the time I thought this might be the only drone I would get, which turned out not to be the case. What you will see in the video I link below is that I did have the idea of taking pictures first as I flew over the area. The moves were slow looking for potential pictures. It is not the way I do things with my current drones, but I thought I would upload this video as it does show the area above The Chemung Mine.

So the first picture is my drone just slightly up looking at the main entrance to The Chemung Mine.

Much higher to my right from the above picture, looking down on the mine:

I flew over and took this from the backside. Something mysterious is in this picture. I will explain it more below, but when I got home, I saw someone walking around between the trees on the lower left side of the picture. Can you see the person in blue?

I then flew back further to get a picture looking towards Bridgeport Lake and Sawtooth Ridge/Matterhorn Peak on the upper left side of the ridgeline.

I then flew back to where I was, and I took this shot looking down on the mine.

So here is the deal with the mysterious person in the pictures and video. What I did was when I got there was fly the drone first. I spent about ten minutes doing that. Then I walked up with my GoPro and did the footage for that video. All through this I never saw anyone at all. I came home, and a few hours later I looked through the pictures and footage on the computer. I was a bit spooked to see a person hanging out at the mine while I was there. I never saw this person.

What I think happened was that person was there with a motorcycle as I got there. I flew the drone as he was there. As I finished up with the drone, he must have taken his motorcycle and gone out on one of those other roads you see in the above picture. He did not come back through the main entrance area. I would like to tell you that he was a ghost, but this seems the logical and natural conclusion to what happened here.

However, I never saw him nor did I ever hear any motorcycle by there. I should have heard the motorcycle roar as he took off. I heard nothing.

Flying Over The Chemung Mine (Youtube Video)

Ghosts of the Past: The Chemung Mine (2.0)

 So this officially starts my "Ghosts of the Past" series I will be doing. I started on October 1st with Donnell Vista as sort of a prelude to this series. What I will be doing in this series is going back to a bunch of places I have done before. The emphasis is on my new GoPro footage I will be releasing. So, this is why you will be seeing a bunch of (2.0) versions of the new videos. Old videos will remain.

This was my first real attempt at testing out my first GoPro (GoPro 9) at The Chemung Mine. I was not sure if I would ever release the footage or not. There are a lot of mistakes I made in the settings, a bunch of flickering due to the lighting situation, and it ended up being kind of messy. The thing is I do not mind my October videos being a little messy in that helps the spookiness of them. I am just going to upload a few pictures to show you what it looked like two years ago, link to my old blog of this area, and, of course, link to the GoPro footage.

The following are interesting. These "Sentinels of Chemung" made a lot of noise as I was wondering around. You can hear them in the GoPro video. "Nevermore!"

The Ghosts of Chemung (2.0) GoPro video on Youtube

My old blog: The Ghosts of Chemung

Donnell Vista: Scenic or Tragic?!

 We have entered October which means I get a little on the spooky side. What it looks like is going to happen is I will officially start my "Ghosts of the Past" Halloween series later this month. I have some commitments I have to keep so I do not want to start anything until those are taken care of. So, I kind of look at this blog entry as a prelude to what I will be doing. However, I want to make it clear that what I am showing here deals with real world unsolved mysteries that friends and families are still seeking closure to. So, I am going to be sensitive, serious, and matter of fact about how I explain this one.

Back in August, 2005 my brother and I had just completed two major mountain scrambles that either border Yosemite or are in it. We were very excited, came home, and I was looking at the local Eastern Sierra news. I noticed that a woman, Nita Mayo, from Hawthrone, NV had gone missing during the days I was doing those hikes. Her car was parked at Donnell Vista past Sonora Pass on HWY 108. I remember some special searches the locals did up until the winter. Over the years I have checked into anything that was said about this since she was never found.

Then in 2014 another woman, Patricia Tolhurst, went missing and again her car was found parked at Donnell Vista. Then in 2016, Breck Phelps, was fishing nearby and his car was found about 1/4 mile from Donnell Vista. None of these people have been found. I will link a few articles that go into more detail below.

Donnell Vista has become a very mysterious place to me. I had all these ideas in my head of how the place should look like and how isolated it must be. If I ever went to this place, should I bring weapons? Two years ago in October I decided to make a visit just to see what the place is like. No, I did not bring any weapons. 

So, after driving on HWY 108 for what seemed like about an hour of going up, down, back, and forth, my brother and I got to the small turnoff parking area that serves as a rest stop for people traveling by. You do get some good views of the area with lots of forest trees around.

There is a major elevation drop off and you can see Donnell Vista lake below. 

If you look carefully, you should see the dam at the end of the lake. From what I understand this is a major source of water for the towns on the western side of the Sierra. Coincidentally, I have read about some of the people crossing this area in the late 1800s before this lake was here. It was a major trek trying to get through the river and down below.

Looking at the dam. Again, the area has a nice trail and lots of trees like this surround the area. You are pretty safe walking around the paved trail here. However, if you go off trail and fall down it might take quite some time before you are found again. Keep this in mind.

This is part of the parking lot. It goes into a circle from the main highway. If you look carefully you can see the rest rooms in the middle of the picture.

The rest rooms. The paper that shows Nita Mayo as missing is the middle there and can be seen in my video. Interesting enough, another person that went missing a month before I visited and is still missing was listed right next to her, but that was somewhere in Yosemite. Many people have gone missing there to never to be found.

Let me give my assessment before I link my video and some of the articles I have seen. This area is isolated, but not as isolated as other places I have been at. There were a bunch of cars parked, families walking around the trail, and I never got the feeling I was ever really alone there. Lots of cars passed by as well, and there are campsites a few miles in each direction. So it was not as isolated as I had imaged it would be. Keep in mind this was in October in middle of the day. I am not sure what it is like during other times in the year or earlier or later in the day. 

Yeah, the terrain is one that if you make a few mistakes you might not be found for a long time. Yet, it is hard to imagine not being found eventually over a period of time. This is puzzling.

So, my conclusion is that in at least one of these cases foul play probably happened. I do not know enough about each case other than what I have seen on the internet and newspapers. So, I do not want to say anymore than that. If you follow this blog you know I always say something like, "nature does not play by rules." Well, when you are travelling in isolated areas that same idea applies. You need to be prepared for not only nature, but people you could encounter. 99.999% of people are good and helpful, but there is always that tiny % you just do not know about.

The video covers what I showed here, but I also used the opportunity to show some of the terrain one encounters in clips back to Sonora Pass:

Donnel Vista: Scenic or Tragic?! (Youtube Video)

Some articles:

Mineral County Independent News Article

Nita Mary Mayo Charley Project

Patricia Sue Tolhurst Charley Project

Breck McDowell Phelps Charley Project