Looking for Old Gold Diggings but Finding Wild Bighorns-- up on the East Fork

OK, I admit it. Late in life, I’m becoming a gold bug. Like most Californians who get infected, I associate finding gold with wading through icy cold streams, getting very muddy and spending a lot of time hunched over looking at gravel. I suppose my case of Gold fever is attenuated by my love of trout fishing. Where I grew up in Southern California there are as many legends about huge trout as they are about weekend panners that sometimes get really lucky and find a few flakes of pure gold trapped at the base of a natural rill in a seldom hiked portion of the East Fork of the San Gabriel River north of Azusa.
But, unlike a lot of gold seekers, I understand that the gold you find in river courses generally comes from a hidden seem of granite or auferious quartz, somewhere high in the mountains near rivers. And that knowledge, coupled with the loud noises of the ungodly remodeling project in my house in rural San Diego County, is what drove me to so something today I haven’t done since I was a teenager—take a long hike up a little traveled canyon that winds it’s way up the slopes of Mount Baldy. Carrying my quarter sectional map, my field glasses and a geologist’s hammer along with a cell phone with a fully charged battery, a packed lunch, two canteens, my space blanket and a light weight jacket I hit the trail mid-morning.
My goal was to hike uphill for three hours looking for signs of 19th century mining activity.It didn’t take me very long to find signs of exploratory mining. Back when it was quite fashionable to use explosives to move DG (decomposed granite) shale or other mineral formations to find quartz or other minera l seams. Using my field glasses, I found several piles of overburden that had been blasted to expose dim white quartz seams.
I spent a very pleasant four hours picking through geologic detritus to see if there was any evidence of color. Not surprising there was no sign of gold. But I had a very nice lunch on top of a small ledge at about 2,500 feet elevation. Spread out in down in “civilization” was much of the East Fork drainage and a view of the Whittier Hills some 45 miles away.
I did see something though that really caught my attention, a small herd of wild mountain sheep making their way back up Sheep Canyon towards safe cover on the sides of Mt.Baldy. The wild big horns in the San Gabriel Mountains are tough wily creatures. In a lifetime of hiking up here I’ve only come close enough to see individual animals a handful of times.
Watching these thickly fleeced wild things, I saw them break stride and pick up speed ascending an ancient game trail. A brief flash of tan fur one half miles behind gthe sheep made me understand why the sheep had taken off. I guess a puff of wind ha carried the scent of the bob cat far enough up the canyon to alert the bighorns.
The sun was moving down to the west when I scrambled down the slope, rejoining the trail through Sheep Canyon just up from where I had seen the bobcat. I stopped and looked at the prints in the wet brown dirt of the canyon floor. They were 4 to 5 inches wide and her loping stride was long enough for me to realize she was probably it was a mature 30 to 40 pound cat.
I didn’t find any gold and I may never hit a seam, but when I need to escape the madness of a remodel, it’s always nice to know that the wild things are still out there, if you take the time to be quiet, sit and watch. Jim Forbes- 1/02/2008.