Week ending Nov 14, 2019 Laughlin

Friday, we walked along Casino Rd up to the entrance road to Harrah's Casino, the last one on the strip, and the only one the riverwalk doesn't reach.  From the entrance, it is 93 steps on the staircase down to the casino.  After wandering through the casino, checking out the food outlets, we chose to walk back up the road rather than using the staircase, making the grade much better. 

Pinty's curling on Saturday.

On Sunday, we went to the office to pay for 2 more weeks, until Nov 24.  Then we watched CFL playoffs, Pinty's finals and the MLS Cup.

Monday, there was a wind warning from 10:00 AM until 7:00 PM.  However, it was warm early, so we walked out toward the dam again.  Saw a couple of roadrunners pose, but we had decided not to carry the camera.  Tried to get picture with the phone, but it is too difficult to see with the glare.

Wednesday we finally decided the weather was good enough (wind quiet enough) to head out to Empire Mine.  It is above Lake Mohave east of Cal-Nev-Ari.  It is about 10 miles east of the village on Loran Station Road, then Empire Wash Road.  We weren't sure how close we could get to the mine with the truck.  About 7 miles in there was a junction where we could park, and the road further looked like we would need somewhere special to turn around.  Not knowing the road, we decided to stop there.   There was a building off the road about where the hardtop ended.   From where we stopped the mine was just over 3 miles, as the crow flies, so we figured it would be about 4 miles each way.  A couple of guys drove past us shortly after we started walking.  We passed their truck parked on a wider area of the road less than a mile away.  From the topo maps, it looked like the route didn't have a lot of elevation.  That was a mistake, since the road worked down through a wash, which was quite soft slogging in places. We learned to walk on the edge where the vehicles (ATV's we presume) hadn't stirred up the sand.

We saw a few hares that we spooked.  Only a few birds.  We did have one large spider cross the road ahead of us.   We figure it was a tarantula, a first for us.

Large Spider

We did a small detour to Potential Mine.  It had several culverts into the mine with bars over them.   We haven't seen these anywhere else.

Potential Mine

Then we walked through the narrow point of Empire Wash.

Ridge along Empire Wash

Shortly past this, a side road heads up to Empire Mine.

Joan stopped at the lower shaft of Empire Mine,

Lower mine entrance

while John did the switchbacks, up to the higher mine site.   It doesn't look like many people visit this site, as the switchbacks were overgrown with low bushes, and barely wide enough for burros, never mind vehicles.  That might have explained the old truck.

Truck over the edge

what's left of mine structure

Lake Mohave from Empire Mine

The distance to the mine was 4.8 miles.  It took us 2h30m to get there.  Our ascent was 600 feet and total descent was 1200 feet.  The climb from the wash to the mine was 313 feet in .5 mi.

After about 1.6 miles back, Joan was tiring out and needed an extended rest, so John left her there to rest under a bush in the shade, while he returned to the truck.  He was pleased to find we had left several 2 liter bottles of sprite zero in the truck, as we had only taken 2 liters of water with us.  He drove the truck back about a mile to the furthest place that looked navigable, then walked back about .4 miles where he met Joan coming up the hill.  We returned to the truck, got it turned around.  

We arrived back at the truck at 3:13 PST.   We had started at 9:08, so this was over 6 hours.  Definitely longer than we had planned.  Note: no more hikes more than 6 miles, and take some food with us, even if only a few apples and granola bars. 

We stopped at the Chevron at the junction of highway 95 and 163 to enjoy a treat of ice cream, since we had only had a few werthers since breakfast.