Coolest Find While Hiking

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highpilgrim
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by highpilgrim »

Spectacular find.
Throne of Stewart.jpg
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by mtree »

During a long bike ride I pulled off and wandered into the woods to pee. I saw something in the distance...odd shape. It was a lone tombstone in the woods not far from the road. It read something like, "Here lies Fred Smith who on August 1,1690 died of his injuries after being hit in the head by a cart wheel." I reported it to the county and years later found they had cleared the area and encircled it with a wire fence. Why was I looking for it years later? I managed a gravestone rubbing before the practice was outlawed! I still have it.

The unmarked graves (piles of rocks actually) of 5 people who died of small pox in the 1700s. At the time it was unknown exactly where they were buried. The bodies were taken far from town so as not to infect anyone else. Me and a friend had heard the stories in school and that the location of the graves had been lost over time. After stumbling upon the stones during a purposeful hike we contacted some adults and brought them out to our find. Lo and behold! Mystery solved! I was probably only 9 or 10 years old.

A brass bell along with numerous tools from a wrecked half-buried wagon. The tools were mostly rust, but the bell cleaned up nicely and my mom still has it on display in her home. I also dug up a bunch of gold colored flake. My dad had it analyzed thinking it might be a gold-based amalgam from early dental procedures. Turns out it was essentially bronze "powder". Never could figure out its purpose.

A Mercury head dime found on the floor of a closet in an abandoned building. And a very well-worn mid 1800s half dollar found near same area.

A crashed single engine airplane. It was a few weeks after it was reported, but it sure was difficult to locate. Authorities had already extricated any bodies. Not sure how they got some kind of vehicle so deep in the "jungle" of woods, but they did. Once we discovered the crude path, we followed it to the plane wreck.

An abandoned Model T Ford left to rust away in the woods near my uncle's cabin (cottage, as it was called). It even had tires...or what was left of them. The engine was removed. Otherwise the entire thing was intact.

Skeletons of various "pets" at the base of a cliff deep in the woods. Some were nearly complete and intact...skull, backbone, part of legs all still attached. Many pets had been reported missing from the nearby neighborhood over the years. I couldn't tell if they were just decomposed kills left by some animal or if they were human caused. They were so pristine and perfect. Spooked, I quickly left the area and never returned.

A couple 1950s vintage hand-painted "Put your butts HERE!" signs from a missile test site. I left them. Now I wish I snagged one of those babies!

An adobe and stone building in the middle of nowhere in SE Colorado not far from Mesa Verde. It even had shards of pottery. I didn't take anything. I should have explored a lot further around the area, but it was getting late in the day and I had to get back to camp before dark. Never returned.
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Above_Treeline
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by Above_Treeline »

highpilgrim wrote:Spectacular find.

Throne of Stewart.jpg
I actually saw one of those floating one time canoeing on a local bayou during flood stage. :D Thanks for posting.

One cool thing I found: mountains :D. And some super cool lakes, streams, and wilderness.
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LURE
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by LURE »

mtree wrote: Why was I looking for it years later? I managed a gravestone rubbing before the practice was outlawed! I still have it.
That's illegal??

I guess that doesn't surprise me that it would've been outlawed. Makes sense, it could come off as disrespectful. Never woulda thought though. Seems that would be more of a cemetery policy than a law. You get a pic?

edit: upon some quick google work I find that it may be illegal more due to damage it can cause gravestones over any respect issues?
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by mtree »

LURE wrote:
mtree wrote: Why was I looking for it years later? I managed a gravestone rubbing before the practice was outlawed! I still have it.
That's illegal??

I guess that doesn't surprise me that it would've been outlawed. Makes sense, it could come off as disrespectful. Never woulda thought though. Seems that would be more of a cemetery policy than a law. You get a pic?

edit: upon some quick google work I find that it may be illegal more due to damage it can cause gravestones over any respect issues?
It became illegal throughout NE states many years ago. It had nothing to do with disrespect. It was all about potential damage to the gravestones. Careless people would knock them over, cause damage, and make a mess of stones over 300 years old. They're considered historical records/markers as well as religious tombstones. Big fines if you're caught getting a rubbing nowadays. I still have the rubbing. Any photos long gone. No digital cameras or phones back then!
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by LURE »

mtree wrote:Big fines if you're caught getting a rubbing nowadays.
Well that just goes without saying.
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by sanjuanmtneer »

The summit register of what is most likely the first ascent of Kismet, next to Sneffles, left in 1932 by Mel Griffiths, Gordon Williams and Dwight Lavender (see page 12 of Rosebrough's San Juan Mountains Guidebook for a photograph of those climbers on that climb). We were there within a day or two of exactly 50 years later. The first page was done in a variety of colored pencils
We left it on the summit but it was found several years later at the base of the peak and was then fortunately sent to the CMC for archival.

I also found a very old register on the summit of Gladstone Peak in the San Miguels. I don't have a photograph of it like the Kismet register but I remember it being also 50 (or more) years old. There were only about 20 entries on it. I can't remember for certain who left it but it was either William S. Cooper or the McClintocks (see Rosebrough's book for those guys as well). I have never taken a register off of a summit but wish I would've kept that one. Hopefully it is archived appropriately as well.

I don't know if this counts because I was actually looking for it but I found a route out of the Roobers Roost system of canyons that saves several hours of walking or re-ascending ones rappel ropes back up the slots. It is called "Moki Trail" by Mike Kelsey in his Utah Canyoneering books. I first used it to do a quick entry into the Robbers Roost canyons for a multi-day backpack.
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by HikesInGeologicTime »

When I was in middle school, I was obsessed with the old Moffat Road. I read everything there was to find in the days before high-speed internet about the construction and maintenance of the rail line over Rollins Pass and the railroad's slow descent into decay as it first became an (unstable) auto route, then a recreation area after the Needle's Eye Tunnel collapsed for the last time, once the Moffat Tunnel opened up.

I'd read that before the Moffat Tunnel, there was an earlier, aborted attempt to bore a higher-elevation (though obviously lower than anything already in use) tunnel at Yankee Doodle Lake. But no matter how many times my dad and I hiked in that area, scouring the rock for signs of decades-old disturbances, we never could find anything.

One day, when we were looking down into the lake from the Needle's Eye, my dad saw a shadow on the eastern side of the lake - a tunnel-shaped shadow. We went down the road to investigate, and luckily, while the sun had shifted during our descent, we were able to remember the location of the shadow well enough to figure out where the tunnel was. It looked so obvious when we were staring into it, but from farther away and without the light hitting everything around it, we hadn't been able to see it!

I went back up to Rollins Pass in 2014 to do some hiking and take some pictures of decrepit old railroad structures, and I parked at Yankee Doodle Lake. It had been over a decade since the last time I'd been up there, so I wasn't sure exactly where the tunnel was anymore. Luckily, I finished my hike/photography session in enough time to get back to my car just as the afternoon sun was lighting up everything around the opening, so I was able to find it again - and photograph it for posterity this time.
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by Greenhouseguy »

I saw the tunnel entrance while I was hiking up there in October. That must have been a cool train ride back in the day.

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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by HikesInGeologicTime »

Nice shot - I’ve never been up there when it wasn’t full-on summer conditions. My dad and I got stuck in deep snow high up on County Road 8 one winter, and that put me off attempting to drive Grand County’s back roads myself when they’re anything less than dry.

From what I read, that ride must also have been somewhat nerve-wracking if there was snow en route!
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by CORed »

On the Wigwam Trail, in Lost Creek Wilderness, out of Lost Park Campground, near the pass where the trail crosses from the Lost Creek drainage to the the Wigwam Creek drainage, there used to be a complete horse skeleton. The last time I was there, seven or eight years ago, there were only a few scattered bones remaining. I think I last saw the complete skeleton some time in the 1980's. I always wondered what the story was behind that. Probably somebody had a pack or saddle horse die, or it broke a leg and had to be put down, while riding on that trail.
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Re: Coolest Find While Hiking

Post by espressoself »

Hoping to revive this old thread since it has been a few years. This has been one of my favorites I’ve read through.

I found what I believe are fossils of some kind on Dyer a few years ago:
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I also found a chunk of coal below the long-defunct DSP&P RR line up toward St. Elmo in a talus pile along Chalk Creek. Kind of a neat piece of history.
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