Metric Weeks

[Tillaway]

I have been working metric weeks here recently. In fact I just got home last night. What is a metric week?... well I have been working ten straight days between trips home.  This "week" turned out to be about 13 days, It snowed the first two days that I was at work and I really didn't feel like getting soaked to the bone working in the jungle of brush so I stayed in the cabin.  The last two I days I worked the temps reached well into the upper nineties.  It's either trying to freeze you fry you. ;D

I have been working in the vacinity of LaPorte, California, an old gold mining town at about 5000' elevation in the Sierras.  The town was established in about 1850 and at one point it bid to be the state capital.  Now it now boasts a permanent population of 35 people.  Actually 35 seems to be a bit optomistic.  The town has no school, mayor, cop or any other bureaucracy.  The general store just reopenned this past winter.  It has been closed for at least three years.  The hotel reopenned two years ago and the deli is open when they feel like it, same with the bar.  There is a guy that has a repair shop is only around after he gets back from his county road crew day job.  The guy that has the snowmobile shop is only open when there is enough snow to ride on.

The whole area around LaPorte was hydraulic mined until the 1880's when hydraulic mining was outlawed.  They had to build hundreds of miles of ditches to bring water into the area and service the various camps and towns that sprang up. All the ditches were dug by hand and construction went on year around even through the usual 10 or so feet of winter snow. In fact one of the problems we have to deal with is protecting all the ditches, dams, camps and old pipe lines littering the area.

I will see about taking some pictures next time out if anyone is interested.  

[Jeff]

Always interested!

[DanG]

I'd be fascinated to see them. Interesting how they are paying all that extra money to preserve what amounts to a blight on the landscape, rather than allowing nature to reclaim her own. :-/

[Tom]

It's a shame that the rest of California couldn't learn from La Porte and be able to govern itself without all that bureaucracy and red tape.  Maybe a little town of 35 would have a lot to teach to the big cities about "how to live".  The big cities have forgotten, I'm afraid.

13 day weeks is hard to take.  How long do you get off before you have to go back, normally.

I sure would enjoy some pictures and a good history lesson of that area.  As a matter of fact, I would enjoy articles written by any member about where he lives or works.  Was the hydraulic mining for Gold?  I assume so but you never know.  Hydraulic has a different meaning today.  You know, a tube full of oil pushing a rod.  How did they generate the pressure to wash the soil?

[Ron Scott]

What is the work you are doing??

[Tillaway]

Hi all...
Yes,  there's gold in them thar hills, and I keep finding myself looking a little too close at all the quartz in the area.  In fact I keep catching myself staring into a creeks looking for signs of color resting on the bed rock.  I have been told that 80% of it is still there, at least so the local miners tell me. There are claims everywhere and miners have a tendancy to be a bit... err ... crotchity.  We are setting up a Defensible Fuel Profile Zone centered on a mining claim dating back the the 1880's.  It is still in the family and is currently in the process of finaly getting the patent.  The man filing the patent believes he owns the land (it's still National Forest) and says he is paying property taxes on it.  Therfore he runs everyone off at gunpoint... we have an uneasy truce with him since he wants the work done, and he doesn't have to pay for it.  I wish I had a camera with me because he has a classic active mine shaft with rails and ore carts and a stamp mill located there.  I don't want to push my luck going back for pictures.

Hydrualic mining is done using water... and lot's of it.  The miners dug ditches to carry water to the mining areas.  They routed water from the Feather river, around a mountain and through (tunneled) another to reach the area.  The water was collected in reservoirs piped to the pit and run through a monitor and nozel.  Gravity was the soul source of the pressure.  The water was often collected again by a series of catch ditches and reused further down the hill.  They also dug many miles of catch ditches for catching snow melt.  I have found two dams on top of flat ridges that were obviously reseviors for snow melt. The area was completely denuded during this process, not a tree in sight.  Now there are 40 and 50 inch Sugar Pine growing there.

Generally when I work out of town I work ten on and four off.  This is a pretty normal schedule for a western forestry consulting firm.  We have to go the work no matter what state or country it is in.  My old boss at the firm I used to work for was in Siberia las February.  He took lots of pictures and I am kind of kicking myself for not going.  If he wasn't in Alaska right now I would post some pictures he took while he was there.