Exploration Hike – June 14th, 2022 – Damascus

Gold Exploration

Hello Everyone,

Deb, Laura and I made the search for Damascus on Saturday September 23rd. What a trip we had.

One of the attached Gaia files shows our total route. The second a zoomed in detail of the last part of the trip from the Damascus plaque. I’ll give thanks right now to Laura for sending me the Gaia tracking. She did a super job on this. Thanks Laura.

Damascus
Gaia Zoomed
Gaia

We parked at the Dorer Ranch Road and hiked up the Elliott Ranch Rad to the motorbike trail. From there on down to the crossing of the old Damascus Mine Road. We followed that old roadway/pathway to the Damascus plaque. It took awhile to find it again. We were initially looking near the first big apple tree but the plaque was at the second one . Once we were at the plaque our efforts were to find the old Damascus road that was supposed to have continued. Guess what? It did.

It took us awhile to find it but then we were right on and it took us to a split in the old roadway, if you want to call it a roadway.! Now it is just a way….

We went down on the left split and found an area that would have been an old house site. Laura was detecting with lots of targets. While she was detecting more, Deb found another lower house spot that I checked out with her. 

After awhile we went back up from the lower split and chased the upper one. Some big trees had fallen across and we finally worked our way around them and found another potential house site and just past that the road was gone, cut sharply by the spring ravine. We think there might have been a bridge here in 1860, going across to the other side, where more houses were supposed to be. 

We stayed on the west side of the Spring ravine because of time, although Laura did go up a hogback and saw a possible way around the top of the spring ravine. We were looking at time though, so we headed back to the plaque and spent some time in that area before coming on back.

Our trip has shown that the old ghost town of Damascus is here and not on the other side of the Mountain Gate mine. We have only begun to explore this area.

Here’s some pictures:

On the bike trail. Deb took a lot of good pictures for us. Thanks Deb!
These are big mushrooms!
Apple tree time. They are still way too green. Even the bears think so because there is only one bite of each apple on the ground. They are just starting to turn red.
Deb promised she wouldn’t miss this one on top of my head, but she didn’t have a bow and arrow. I didn’t like the handgun she was carrying.
OK, I know the plaque is here somewhere close!
At the plaque.
It took us awhile to get to this picture. This is the split in the old road. We took the left split down first.
Digging out one of the targets. There were numerous hits. Lots of metal.
On the upper road now. More metal.
Deb clowning around about this piece . Everything is buried under the leaves, and dirt from erosion, that is covering everything up. There was a very rusted barrel hoop near there too (buried like everything else).
We did get into a few slippery spots . Laura is sliding down the fast way!
These are big mushrooms!
On the trail to the plaque.
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