Iron Mountain Mined Traditional Cache
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A 7 mile bike ride that can be driven. Be very careful about bikers as they descend this dirt road at speeds greater than most cars. Bring a camera and enjoy the view.
History Happened Here: "Iron Mountain Mined."
One in a series of local caches that will comprise a Multi-cache "History Lives-Stick 'em up or Tell it to the Judge" Collect the number at the cache to use in finding the final cache location.
Search for Iron Mountain Mine but don’t list Redding and you will find some environs, trumpeting their mine. The environment of the Sacramento River once was threatened by acidic runoff from what was the California’s largest copper mine from 1895-1919. While gold, silver, zinc, and pyrite (used to produce sulfuric acid) were also mined, the notoriety gained when the mine was placed on the nation’s toxic superfund list in 1983 assuring efforts would be invested to stem the acidic pollution of the Sacramento River.
Textbooks usually describe pH as a range of zero to 14, with 7 neutral. The closer to zero a substance measures, the more acidic it is. With a pH of -3.6, the puddles found in the Iron Mountain Mine are more acidic than battery acid. The hundreds of gallons of neon green water that flow out of the mine's portals each minute have a pH level of 0.5, a world record. The closest previous measurements were found in volcanic lakes, but they occurred naturally. The Iron Mountain Mine's toxic water is the result of 100 years of mining.
Fortunately, as reported in the Record Searchlight on May 7, 2004, the Slickrock Creek Retention Reservoir was just completed. This will help catch 95% of the metals before they reach the Sacramento River. Their efforts are obviously having effect at stopping the pollution as you regularly see people fishing on the Sacramento River, just downstream of the mine.
Beautifully colored rocks bare of vegetation. Now you understand the cut in the mountain you see looking north-west from Redding.
Route: Catch the dirt South Fork Mountain Road just before the Whiskeytown overlook. Just over 5 miles up, go right at the "Y" unless you want to go up to Left Utensil, up the road.
This cache can be driven,if you have good clearance on your vehicle, but the twenty to thirty feet from the road is a scramble. It has been suggested that it is easier coming up the hill from the east. Use hands going up and coming down. After seeing the mine for the last 1.6 miles, I choose a more refreshing view for this cache. Bring camera.
The number is in the lid and log book. The caches in this series, in alphabetical order are:
Beltline
Buena Ventura
Falke’s Lake
Iron Mountain Mined
Precious One
Reading’s Rainbow
Ruggles’ Frontier Justice?
Swimming Hole
I hope you enjoyed learning a little and standing where "History Happened Here: Shasta County."
Carpe Diem, Carpe Geocachiem. . .MtnMike
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ol gur cvar. Zbffl ebpxf.
Treasures
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