The Goldmine Loop Trail along the Road to Nowhere

May 2^nd

It’s a safe bet you will not find any gold on this trail but you will find golden memories, fantastic vistas, and perhaps a few friendly faces.

 Even though we hiked the trail mid-week in early June we encountered two horsewomen with their mounts and a mother and son completing a home school project.  For a lightly traveled trail this was a population explosion.  

Kay and Eli

The trail follows the streams up, down, and around the mountain with beautiful vistas, shrubbery tunnels, and heavy tree growth.  Tunnels were the theme of the day as you first walk through the tunnel at the end of The Road to Nowhere before starting the trail.  Today's journey started downhill across outer edge of the tunnel before encountering the stream. 

There was ample evidence of horse usage and as we proceeded it became clear we were gaining on the horse traffic.  Now, how did we know?  The horse cakes were becoming fresher and the dung beetles were busy moving around balls of horse cakes. There are three main types of dung beetles: rollers, tunnellers and dwellers.  These appear to be the tunnellers and are an important part in the recycling animal feces. 

Dung Beetle tumbling the Horse Cookie

Continuing down the path I find a lime green fruit, now I know it is not a lime but what is it?  Not certain, I set the lime green ‘puff ball’ aside and headed down the trail.  Later I learned this was probably a may-pop which is the edible berry of a passion fruit vine.  The vine bears fruit May to October, yes this is May and there were plenty of vines in the area.  With this knowledge, I will keep the next may-pop for a taste test.

May-Pop

Back along the trail we notice a few traps, probably bear traps, and elaborate schemes for hanging food and supplies.  The park service provides these bear storage ropes and cables as a service to primitive campers in the back country.  Thankfully we did not meet a bear.

The path travels along the stream allowing us to pass through a tunnel of trees and emerge into a meadow by the stream.  On closer look we find a chimney, house foundation, and a rusted wash tub. One can imagine the family clearing the trees, building the house from the lumber and stream rocks, creating an irrigation system using the two streams that bound the property, plowing the fields, and harvesting the crops. 

The trail ends by climbing the ridge from the stream back to the tunnel and Road to Nowhere.  This is more than a dead end road; it imparts a sense of the rustic mountain life that existed before 1940.  You feel the solitude and harshness of life in the backwoods where the nearest neighbor was 5-10 miles away and the trip was by foot or horse.

You appreciate the lives of the pioneers and native Americans.