GC1XVEW WWII Quartz Mine
Type: Traditional | Size: Regular | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: Ivan, Linda, Roy, Julie & Riley @ | Hide Date: 08/15/2009 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N39° 31.250 W105° 31.652 | Last updated: 08/30/2019 | Fav points: 0

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Parking is at 9,000 feet elevation. 1/2 mile+ hike one way with about 200 feet gain.. 30 minute round trip walk without dawdling. Nice scenery.

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A sturdy ammo can replaced a one-gallon can painted green in summer 2012? with a daffodil book mark, a cloth bookmark from Budapest, a small fantasy action figure, a baggy with a few local rocks & the log. The items are all different now. Updated Oct 29, 2012.

From US 285 east/north of Bailey take Park County Road 43 or 43a to PC Rd 47 to Stagecoach Dr. North (right) to the end of Stagecoach and park at N 39d 30.980; W 105d 31.411. (Mapquest is better than the map on the Geocache site.)

Go north across the Forest Service road closed sign and follow the old road/trail up the hill. Ignore the first fork to the left and slightly downhill. When you get within sight of the top of the hill, take the distinct fork to the left which goes only slightly uphill. In a short distance tailings from the mine cross the trail. Go up the hill a few feet to the mine. The cache is inside the open pit.

We live nearby. When our foundation was poured in the 1970's one of the concrete drivers knew right where our house was because he hauled quartz out of the mine during World War Two. (I think the crystals were used for radios?)

The chips & debris on the ground are from a fire mitigation project in 2007. Large machines with toothed rollers ground the trees over and then ground the trunks up and left some fairly big pieces of logs. The debris was supposed to be burned in 2008 but didn't happen and probably won't now. Probably 8-9 of every 10 trees were removed. The remaining trees became isolated and many have blown over.

12/15/2018 By pattymack
I had originally found this cache quite some time ago and thought it was a cool cache in a great location. It had recently come to my attention that the container was gone and all that remained was the log book. I reached out to the cache owner who no longer lives in the area and have gotten his permission to look after the cache although no official adoption has taken place yet. I had a cool container and a trackable I needed to drop so today I went up and replaced the container which has some cool items in it, I hope that others will trade in kind. It's a shame that the contents of the original container were just dumped on the ground like so much garbage just so someone could steal the ammo can .. :( .. In any case the cache is back in action. Enjoy!

08/29/2018 By lsprat
Great first Geocatch to find, basically in our own backyard! Thanks

08/28/2018 By mmart23
What a fun find! We’re local homeschoolers who walked up the neighborhood to find it! The kids loved it! And what a cool place to hide it! We had no idea this mine was back here! Beautiful!

05/06/2018 By doronbc
Very neat, SL tftc

08/27/2017 By Team Chili Fries
OMG this was an absolute great place to hike we love all the old mines and this one was great. Had no idea we had so much quartz this close to home. Favorite point for sure cache is wet inside and rusty items as well.

07/14/2017 By Shesadilley
What a beautiful area. Great day to be out geocaching with my grandsons. This gets a favorite. Thanks!