West Branch Iron Mine (GC6D34)

This was quite an adventure. I found the trail head ok, but I wasn’t sure where to park. I finally decided to venture a ways up the “road closed” part, but didn’t get to far before I started bottoming out. I found a pull off and backed up into that and left the car there.

The trail is an old road so it was pretty easy going, except for the dozen or so trees that were blown down across the road.

I ended up walking right past the mine. I didn’t actually see a sign or anything and my GPS said it was still a ways away. I did see the location and thought it would be a nice place to stop and eat lunch on the way back. I followed the road some more and it started getting really steep. I then checked the GPS and saw that I was close to the spot before I started going up hill, but now was going in the wrong direction. So I turned around and headed back to a clearing where I thought I saw another path. The other path ended up dumping me in the river. It looked like the GPS spot was really close the river so I decided to follow that. After a ways I looked up and saw a path that was also following the river, but was about 20″ up the bank. I somehow managed to climb up to it and follow it for a bit before I realized that this was the path I was just on that was going the wrong way. I started to think that I had picked a very bad hobby. I started looking for side paths that might lead back down toward the river, closer to the cache. I thought I found one, but ended up bushwacking back down to the river and was quite annoyed that I didn’t see a mine anywhere. Turns out I was misreading the directions, as the mine was nowhere near the cache. Anyways, I found the area of the cache, but couldn’t find the damn thing due to all the downed trees, and my thinking that the coords. were off.

This is where the cache should be.

I followed the river back to where I had been before and went to that nice place I saw for lunch. Oh! There’s the mine!

I forgot my flashlight so I couldn’t see too far in, but I didn’t trust that ladder thing to get up in there anyways.

After I got home I found out that I was actually in the right spot more or less. The tree cover gives the GPS fits so I have a few more “close” coords. to try later.

Close