For our second excursion with the Jeep, we set out for Chloride Cliffs, also known as Chloride City, an old mining district high in the Funeral Mountains. It is reached by a 4WD road that leaves Daylight Pass Highway somewhere between Hell’s Gate and Beatty. As in our morning excursion, we came to a fork in the road, but this time there was no sign to direct us and, instead of Chloride Cliffs, we ended up in Monarch Canyon. But that was OK, because the distance to Chloride Cliffs was much longer, and we probably would have had to come back on that 4WD road in the dark.
Monarch Canyon is if anything more colorful than Marble Canyon – a geological potpourri with banded cliffs and multicolored rocks all round.
A little trail led us down deeper into the canyon, and we took it, not knowing how far we’d go or what to expect when we got down further into the canyon.
In addition to the colorful rocks, we encountered some interesting flora on the way, such as a tiny cactus nestling under a rock, with rose-colored needles all seeming to spring out from a hidden center.
Upon reaching the canyon floor, we found it to be covered with a dense thicket of reeds and long grass, fed by a small spring.
Proceeding further, we encountered an old stamp mill, designed to crush rock containing gold ore by pounding it, thereby preparing it for further processing. The ore is fed in via buckets carried down from the mineshaft on an aerial tramway.
By now it was getting late, and there didn’t seem to be much point in going any further, so we turned back at the stamp mill and wended our way back up to the parking lot. Again we had to plow our way through the little jungle of tall grass and reeds that constituted the quasi-wetland, no big deal, except that this time I seemed to have an allergic reaction to something in the vegetation and emerged sneezing and coughing. I quickly recovered, but I’m still wondering what it was in there that set me off.
Climbing back up the trail, I saw a splendid promontory jutting from the mountain above the parking lot with its upper half gleaming in the late afternoon sun while its lower depths were in shadow. It reminded me of Yosemite’s El Capitan, and of course I couldn’t resist getting a shot of it.
Back at the top of the trail, the Jeep was waiting to take us back to Farrabee’s, with Josie at the wheel.
