Jubilee Mountain, Ibex Peak, & American Mine Death Valley

Yesterday Jen Blackie and I climbed Ashford and Desert Hound peaks to the west and today we had a few other random peaks in the Zdon Peak List to choose from.  We decided to grab Ibex since I had seen the name pop up a number of times on Peakbagger radius searches and Jubilee since it was straightforward and along the way.  With the sun going down so early I figured we probably were not going to have time for anything else which did turn out to be the case.

We ended up spending extra time around Ibex due to the New American Mine / American Mine located on the southwestern slope.  We took a longer route to climb the peak and found one of the more extensive mines I've come across lately.



We slept at the Ashford Canyon trailhead and had a great view of the supermoon which lit up the entire valley below us.  After breakfast we stopped by Ashford Mill ruins again to take advantage of the pit toilet and then drove back to the junction with Jubilee Pass Road.



We parked in a turnout just west of Jubilee Pass and climbed up the north ridge.




The peak very straightforward and only about a mile from the road but it has a really nice summit view of the surrounding area and it even gets cell reception if you have AT&T.


Up top we found a 1950 benchmark and a register inside of a duct taped glass jar which showed the peak gets visited fairly often.

Next up was Ibex and we elected to head for the mine southwest of the peak and then climb the peak from that side.

The topo map shows a dirt road briefly running parallel to the curve in Bradbury Wash but only the eastern side still existed.  From there we followed a very good dirt road about 1.2 miles to a pullout with a wilderness sign.

(The road did continue on to the southwest and from satellite pictures it continues over to Confidence wash where there is additional mining activity.)


Past the wilderness sign it was obvious there had been a road here at some point in the distant past.  It leads to the prospect northwest of Ibex and a fainter offshoot takes you back to the American Mine southwest of the peak


Getting to the mine required crossing a saddle and dropping down again but even from a distance we could see a few small structures and numerous entrances.


This was the main entrance we found.  I can't find a whole lot about this mine online or in any of my guidebooks but it's obviously been visited a fair amount.  Oddly enough the sign reading "New American Mine" was the most intact thing around.


Right inside the entrance is a door that was wedged open just enough we could get by with some difficulty.



I could feel a breeze coming from deeper inside the mine and was excited that we'd found a something similar to Potosi with multiple entrances.  However a short distance down the tunnel we found a large vertical shaft which was how the air was getting in.


I don't know how far back the next section went but when I got ahead of Jen she actually ended up shouting for me and it was far enough I couldn't hear a thing.


From there the tunnel continues quite a ways with 6 numbered shafts dropping off to the side.  Some of these had ladders in various states of repair.


This one was in such good shape it was *almost* tempting to try going down.  You know, except for the fact the two of us were in an unmaintained mine alone without so much as a rope if anything gave way.


The tunnel ended at a partial collapse.  It looked relatively safe-ish and I slid past just in case it went further.  Unfortunately there was just a simple Y intersection and both tunnels ended shortly after.


The last shaft before the collapse didn't have one of the rickety ladders and I did go down far enough to look around the corner.  It connected to the next shaft over but was suffering heavily from collapse and I hastily beat a retreat.



As we retraced our steps we did notice a few bats stuck to the ceiling which we hadn't noticed coming in but now seemed rather annoyed at our presence.  We did our best to get past them quickly with a minimum of disruption.


There is obviously more to the underground section since we found an additional shaft that went down a lot further than the one we'd looked up at from below.  If anyone reads this and has done a more thorough exploration I'd be interested to hear about it.


We also found this curious structure which I'm not sure of the purpose.  It had a very small door and nothing inside.


The mine was really neat but we still had a peak to do.  We followed the gully up looking in a few other holes along the way but not finding anything that went back very far.



The wind was starting to pick up as we climbed the last ridge to the peak.


We found another small register dating back to the 70s that had signatures from a few people I know.  Several signatures mentioned people chasing the California Wilderness High Points list or just being after obscure desert peaks.


From the summit the most interesting looking peaks in the area were to the north of Jubilee Pass Road and if we'd had another day / longer daylight I'd have gone for Epaulet, Salsberry, and Sheephead just because of the interesting looking rock.  Next time!


We took the northwestern ridge down but you would have really had to work to find a ridge or gully that didn't work.  We debated running up to the Prospect 1165T we could see on the topo and it did look like there had been some work done there but the wind had picked up significantly and we were getting rather hungry.