Images:

• SDIM2954 - The gathering at the parking lot.
  
• SDIM2956 - Some sun breaking through the clouds over Mt. Superior.  Similar is #2955
• SDIM2957 - Some sun breaking through the clouds over Mt. Superior.  Similar is #2958
• SDIM2960 - Chris, surveying the top of Silver Fork.  Similar, but without Chris is #2959
  
• SDIM2961 - The obligatory group picture.  L->R:  Dale, Bruce, Chris, Mike, Ron, Gordon, Clint

Notes:

It has been hot and hazy for the past week or so, mostly due to brush and forest fires around the state and the western U.S. - namely in the general area of Cedar City and a few large-ish fires in California.  On this Wednesday it was also a bit cloudy with mother nature making only a half-hearted attempt to generate thunderstorms, but succeeding in little more than clouding up the sky somewhat, reducing some of the heat.

I arrived at the parking lot to find several other people there - including one of the Joneses - Elaine, to be specific.  She'd arrived, ahead of Ron, in her new Corolla, bought in part on the proceeds of turning in their Cherokee as a clunker.  Soon, the rest of the party arrived and somewhat contrary to some past hikes, quickly came to a consensus for the evening's hike:  The Prince of Wales Mine.

We piled into a smaller number of vehicles and headed up Little Cottonwood Canyon, onto the gravel road that goes to Albion basin, and parked just above the last switchback below Grizzly Gulch.  There, we puzzled over a sign that was planted very near the trailhead:  Although I cleverly forgot to take a picture of the sign, one of its statements, "No Parking Along Roadway" caused some concern - offset only slightly by one of the other statements "Parking only in designated areas."  Since there was no other obvious place to park for this well-established trailhead, we convinced ourselves that this was, in fact, a "designated area" although it was un-marked as being such, with the obvious widening of the road at that point being indicative of its intended purpose.

So, we started up the trail, the trailhead of which is only readily visible if one is driving down the road, and rapidly gained elevation above the nearby houses.  Before too long, we joined the access road that parallels the power lines that go over Twin Lakes Pass.  At about this time Elaine, who was still recovering from relatively recent ankle surgery, decided not to push it too much further and started down, taking her time.

The rest of us continued upwards, our group bifurcating in the first meadow:  Ron, Dale and I went up the right side, following the old road, while the rest of the group went up the left side, also following the old road.  The main difference between these paths is that the road on the right side gains elevation at a constant rate along a very rutted and washed-out road while that on the left side, while in better condition, gains elevation more suddenly.  Before too long, however, the two meet again - at about the point that one takes a sharp left to head over to the pass above Silver Fork and it was here that I met Chris and Bruce again.

Ahead of the pack, Chris and I continued upwards along the traverse from Grizzly Gulch to the pass, looking at the many mine dumps and wondering aloud how interesting it might be if we could go back in time to witness, first hand, the flurry of activity that was no doubt present in the area yesteryear - with the road being traversed by horse and donkey cart, active steam engines belching smoke and steam, and aerial trams in action.  We also talked about the long snowshed that covered the road but we couldn't remember if it was between the pass and Grizzly Gulch or between the mine and the pass.  (I later checked - it was, according to Keller, between the Pass and Grizzly Gulch, as noted below.)

Arriving at the pass at the top of Silver Fork, we could see to the north the haze being lit a peach color along the northern horizon while the sun, mostly obscured by clouds, was just setting behind the ridge above Day's Fork.  Proceeding on, we soon arrived at the top of the Prince of Wales Mine where the rusting remains of the 40 horsepower steam engine sits in silent repose.  Peering down the twin shafts, we figured that much of it had been filled in as it seemed to bottom out just 30-50 feet down.  Interestingly, Chris pointed out where it seemed that someone had unwound some of the wire rope from the hoist's cable drum and dropped it down the northern shaft, possibly having used it to rappel to the bottom.

After a few more minutes the rest of the party arrived and Dale wandered off exploring while the rest of us talked about nothing in particular and looked with interest at the remains of the engine.  One of the discussions involved the operation of the engine:  Since it had just one cylinder, what did one do if it was stopped in mid-stroke on the crankshaft?  In such a position, it seemed like it would not be possible to start it again unless one gave the flywheel a push.  We decided that the most likely answer the the question was that the operator probably took some care to avoid that position - but either kept a plank handy to rotate the flywheel slightly or simply used the weight difference of the counterbalanced hoist buckets (one in each of the vertical shafts) to move the wheel.  (Apparently, the technical term for this condition in single-cylinder steam engines is "dead spot.")

At about the time of this conjecture, Dale appeared on the radio, having climbed to the ridge near one of the rope contraptions apparently used to drop charges to trigger avalanches, wondering where we were.  We explained that we'd not really noticed that he'd wandered off and now that it was getting dark, we were ready to take the obligatory group picture.  A few minutes later, Dale reappeared, we took the picture, and started our way back to the pass in the gloaming.

We soon found ourselves back in Grizzly Gulch and our group took the "right hand" (as viewed on the way up) road - the one that I'd taken during the ascent - down.  Upon Bruce's asking why we did this, Gordon replied that one advantage of this route was that there was a much smaller chance of missing the route that we'd followed on the way up - a reference to what had happened in 2006 when we did this same hike.

Breaking out the gulch we continued down, briefly puzzled by the appearance of a stand of trees that some of us didn't seem to recall seeing on the way up.  Assuming that we'd somehow missed a branch in the trail, several of us wandered off into the weeds to find the real trail while Gordon insisted - correctly, as it turned out - that we had gone through this stand of trees and that the bend in the trail was just below it:  He was right, and it was!

By the time we got back to the vehicles Mike and Chris had been there for a few minutes already.  Doffing our gear, we talked for a few minutes - noting that there were no obvious, official-looking pieces of paper on our windshields or boots on our wheels as a result of our choice of parking place.  Piling into our respective vehicles, we wandered down-canyon and back to the parking lot where we went our separate ways.

• None this time

• None this time

None this time

• A detailed map with the GPS track of the hike (plus surrounding landmarks.)
  

• The elevation profile of the hike - This shows the ups and downs of the trail.  Due to ratty signals from the satellites, the elevation data is a bit flaky during part of the ascent.
  

The Prince of Wales mine was largely developed after 1870 by the Walker brothers, who also owned the claim to the Wellington tunnel (just down the hill below the Prince of Wales mine in the clearing near the top of Silver Fork where remnants of a 20 horsepower steam engine may be seen) and constructed a pipeline of more than a mile in length, mostly underground, to feed the steam engine at both locations.  The source of water were some springs in Grizzly Gulch (just below Twin Lakes Pass) with the pipeline going up the slope and then following the contour across to the pass at the top of Silver Fork, the entire system being fed by a 15 horsepower steam-driven pump at the spring.  Apparently, the entire roadway from Grizzly Gulch to the pass at the top of Silver Fork had been covered by a snowshed to protect it from avalanches - a length of approximately 1800 feet.  What remains of the Prince of Wales mine are pieces of the 40 horsepower steam engine that drove the mine hoist.  Originally, this machinery was housed in a 20 by 50 foot two-story building (with the engine on the lower level) that completely covered both shafts and provided protection against the frequent snowslides from above.

As can be seen from image #3752 of an earlier hike, this engine was manufactured by the Ames Iron Works of Oswego, New York.  This company operated from at least 1862 into the late 1950's or early 1960's.  At about the time of World War II, with the business in steam power declining, they started to concentrate on other products, notably tanks during the war as well as heavy equipment such as hot water boilers, etc.  For a web page that includes another engine made by the Ames Iron Works, see this link.  For a catalog of Ames' products from the late 19^th century see this link.

This steam engine was a so-called crossflow fire tube boiler - the "crossflow" part coming from the fact that the "steam" end is on the side opposite the firebox.  As might be expected, the engine was also of the double-acting type (that is, pressure is applied during both directions of the piston's travel.)  If you look carefully at the main piston assembly, you can also see the cross-linking to the control valve - the one that is used to divert hot steam to one side of the piston or the other.  In modern-day heat exchangers, the fire tube boiler has been replaced with other types owing to its tendency to "disassemble" itself rather spectacularly when it did fail - particularly if the operator allowed the water level to get too low and flash boil.

This mine was also tied in with the Wellington Tunnel (the one just below it) as well as the Annie and Antelope Tunnels (also owned by the Walkers) in Honeycomb fork and some remnants of this road can still be followed as it winds around and drops into Honeycomb.

The Prince of Wales mine was one of the more successful of the mines in the Wasatch, operating in one form or another (mostly under lease) until the mid 1930's and its main product was Galena (lead sulfate) as well as lead carbonates such as Cerussite, and various copper-bearing minerals such as Malachite.

Some online resources about the Prince of Wales Mine and other nearby workings:

• One may find a 1916 USGS report on this and other mines in the Little and Big Cottonwood Canyon areas - the link is here.  Look on pages before and after those pointed to by the link, or you can download the entire book using a link on this page.
• Other interesting data about the mine may be found in an 1880 census report on mining and precious metals at this link.
  
• A more-recent publication that describes some of the mines and geology of the area may be found at this link.  which contains portions of the book "A Hiking Guide to the Geology of the Wasatch Mountains" by William T. Parry.

Some of the above information was from the book "The Lady in the Ore Bucket" by Charles Keller.

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Comments about pictures/video/audio taken by Clint:

• All images taken using a Sigma Digital SLR camera and were taken using the lens noted in the EXIF data.  (Usually, an SD-14.)
  
• Because all of the images were originally taken stored in raw binary format, they have been down-processed to .JPG for web posting:  If requested, different color/contrast/brightness may be applied and/or higher-quality uncompressed versions may be available for most of these images.
• If you want one (or more) of these images and wish some sort of adjustment (color, brightness, exposure, etc.) please let me know:  All of these image have been processed in some way.
• These images are numbered in chronological order.
• No-one ever said that all of these images (or any of them) were good.  Some of them may have definite focus/exposure "issues."
• EXIF data is present for most of the images, showing time, date, and precise exposure conditions.  Recent versions of Irfanview will show this in the "View->Image Information->EXIF" tab.
  
• Note that cropping/noise reduction required the use of another program which may have removed some/most of this EXIF data.
• Images suffixed with "h" (if any) are half-size.  This was done for images that were somewhat out of focus (due to misfocus or camera/subject movement associated with long shutter times) or those that required some extra noise reduction and had lost some detail anyway.  Additional suffixes of the image file name may include "sh" to indicate that some "de-blurring" was done, "mb" for correction of motion blur, and "crop" denoting that the image was cropped.
  
• If you took some pictures of the hike and send them to me, I'll post them - and give you the blame!
• The video clips, if any, were shot using a Panasonic DMC FZ-8 digital camera, have been re-compressed, and are of lower quality than the originals.
• Audio clips, if any, were recorded using a Zoom H-2 audio recorder.
  

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This page maintained by Clint Turner, KA7OEI and was last updated on 20090907 (Copyright 2009 by Clint Turner and those credited above.  All rights on images and text are reserved.)