Index for Mike and brother Rudy (Butch) go prospecting on Mt Antero, 9/00

• The Dodge is loaded for adventure (with way too much stuff)!
• Where we we're headed, from about 30 miles away.
• A view of what is laughingly referred to as a road.
• The road up Baldwin Creek. Its a rough one.
• The road toward Antero
• The road from Baldwin Gulch. Its hard to capture how steep it was. This looks flat... but it wasnt!
• One of three streams we crossed.
• Butch had to clear sharp rocks off the trail. I already popped one tire (I thought I had 6-ply tires, but I learned different).
• Butch moving, or removing more pointy sharp rocks
• The road over the ridge from the California Mine to Antero
• The road from the California Mine, with one of one of White Mountain's summits in the backround.
• Too much Dodge, barely enough road.
• Dodge-zilla Ram-saurus. Chrysler should pay me for such advertizing!
• The Dodge and Antero's summit in the distance.
• A view toward Baldwin Gulch. Lots of mines over there too. And some terrific fishing in Baldwin Lake.
• A really big buck.
• The same two deer.
• Antero, from the ridge
• Setting up camp on the tundra below the California Mine
• Our initial basecamp, with the California Mine just above Mike's ear.
• Butch looking for a place to dig
• Where's Mikey?
• Where's Mikey?
• The hole where Mike hit the Mother Lode
• Mike keeps digging
• A pocket of Flourite!
• Mike's hole is getting bigger, and bigger!
• The flourite hole from a another view
• We packed some buckets of mud to a stream for washing. Butch finds a little chip that indicates we are digging in the right place
• The green in the screen is flourite. This is what we're looking for!
• The cabin (c. 1919) where the miners lived that worked the California Mine.
• Butch shiverring in the wind, waiting for Chez Mike to fix dinner.
• Butch stirring some of Debbie's Famous Stew
• Butch took a wrong turn, and ended up in the bog in the willows. The "red stain" on the left, is the California.
• Butch looking for another place to dig
• Butch scratching his way up to where the flourites should be. Its steeper than it looks in the image.
• Its hard to stand, let-alone dig.
• My brother can really dig, when the possibility of finding something good exists. We never found a stinking thing in this hole.
• Butch must have learned how to dig in the Marine Corps. He dug a huge hole with that tiny shovel.
• This snowfield used to be more than a 1/2 mile wide, extending across the mountain. Now is is only 50 yards wide. Don't tell me global warming isn't real!
• Butch climbing Antero's south knob - where thousands of prospectors have gone before...
• Still climbing, looking, picking... And above-all, catching a breath!
• A view of Antero's true summit. It has two. I've never been on the higher one.
• Still climbing along the ice flow. You'd think that all that melting snow would have left a nice aquamarine exposed... Not!
• The gnarly ridge between Antero's summits
• Scroll down. That tiny speck at the bottom of the image is Debbies Dodge, as seen from Antero's south knob
• According to the rings we saw with the binos, this pond is full of trout
• The road toward White Mountain, from the California Mine
• The road from the California Mine
• White Mountain, and Brown's Canyon
• A view from the Califirnia Mine toward Brown's Canyon
• Butch screening in the dump of the California Mine
• The inscrutable Mikey-san screening in the hot September sun.
• Our camp down in Brown's Canyon. Pretty, but cold. Not as windy. And since it was 1000 ft lower, we could actually boil water!
• Butch tries his luck at "jigging" for trout in the willows
• Butch jigged his first cutthroat in Brown's Creek
• Can you see why they are called "cutthroat trout"?
• Another scattered camp. We gave the maid the week off.
• We call these birds "camp robbers". I dunno their real name.
• Butch looking over the possibilities of where to dig.
• This is the California (molybdenum) Mine. Prior to the cave-in, we used to go deep inside and pull-out wonderful gems. But no more...
• Mount Grizzly.
• Grizzly again. That razer-back ridge is where the California Mine is (but on the other side)
• Can you tell? I really liked this mountain!
• The switchbacks that climb up Antero.
• Another Dodge commercial
• Upper Little Brown's Creek which drains the area below Cyclone Mountain.
• Butch and the Dodge
• Another Dodge commercial. With Mike (am I really this fat?) and Antero's cliffs in the distance. Some pretty great gems purportedly came from this area, but it takes dynamite to get them, and I'm still waiting for my blasting permit. Next year, as they say, I'm gonna have a blast!
• An unnamed mountain. Or it might be Mt Shavano
• A view toward Cyclone Mountain, and upper Little Brown's Creek
• Antero. This is called the South Knob.
• The Dodge with White Mountain in the backround. White Mountain has good aquamarines on it too. Somewhere. I've never found any.
• Another view of upper Little Brown's Creek. Look at those tiny mines on the peak in the left of the image. They had ore carts, a cookstove and a cabin. Until some skank took some dynamite and blew it to smithereens in the late 80s.
• Love those "fall colors"!!!
• Colorado Gold
• A good view of the switchbacks. The Dodge couldnt turn tight enough, so I had to make 2 and three stabs at getting it around the corners. Mighty scary, it was.
• My favorite view
• More Colorado Gold. The Colorado Tourism Commision should buy this image!

Back to Album