April 15th, 2013
Kathmandu, Nepal
Back in Kathmandu. The trek went well and I had a great time. It’s good to be back.
The morning flight to Lukla was uneventful and we were hiking by mid-morning. The valleys and villages below Namche Bazaar are beautiful and lush. Rhododendron blooming everywhere. The trail is littered with small villages, each having several small “markets,” tea houses, and lodges.
March 14, 2013
About two years ago I conned Tom Mahood into hiking to the Captain Jinks Mine in the Hexie Mountains at the eastern end of Joshua Tree National Park. As part of the research for that hike, we identified two other remote mines in that area, the Ruby Lee Mine and the Combination Mine. We had been planning a stupidly long hike to see these mines, requiring a car shuttle, but the weather has warmed up a lot lately and this one might have to wait until fall. Still, we had set a day for the hike, so what else to do?
February 5, 2013
Tom Mahood spent nearly all of last year in New Mexico, so I had a slight respite from joining him on his crazed hikes searching for Bill Ewasko (see posts elsewhere on this blog), but as his time there was waning in late summer, I started getting “I have ideas” emails and he started refering to the coming cooler months as “Ewasko Season.” Desperate to distract him, I came up with the idea of searching for some of the odder things associated with Cary’s Castle. He bit, but merely added it to the hiking agenda. Instead of replacing Ewasko hikes, this was to be in addition to.
April 11-12, 2012
RMRU got a call from Riverside Sheriff’s Office requesting our assistance with a search in San Diego County. A young man, Guillermo Pino, had gone missing while camping with friends in the Mud Caves area in Arroyo Tapiado, part of Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Glenn Henderson and I were the only RMRU personnel available for this mid-week search. RMRU had brought in Fernando Moreira, a professional tracking instructor, to teach a class the following weekend, so Fernando cam along with us.
July 22, 2011
In which I relate the story of how Tom Mahood tried to kill me, Pete Carlson, and Paul Caraher. Or at least get us eaten by a mountain lion. Not only sweat, but actual blood was let on this one. Read on only if you have a strong stomach.
March 20, 2011
As detailed in my post about my involvement in the final chapter (really the final postscript) of finding the Death Valley Germans, I became somewhat involved with the ever-curious escapades of one Mr. Tom Mahood. It’s been downhill ever since.
Jack Freer, a law enforcement officer from Carson City, Nevada, later contacted RMRU looking for Tom and I put the two in touch. Jack had taken an interest in a Carson City resident, Norman Cox, who had abandoned his car at Badwater in Death Valley, left a suicide note, then vanished. The subsequent search turned up no body. This was in August, 2010.
Both Linda Green’s 1984 Historic Resources Report for Joshua Tree National Park and the 1961 California Department of Mines and Geology report for Riverside County listed several mines in the Hexie Mountains as being so remote they were never visited. That really intrigued me, as seldom-visited mines bring to mind relatively undisturbed sites. Google Earth showed small sections of what once had been a road, though the Jinks (sometimes spelled Jenks) mine was said to date back to the late 1800’s. The Ruby Lee and Combination mines had never really been much more than prospects, so held less interest. I emailed the DzrtGrls and when Jamie got back to me that this was even a bit too remote for them, I was hooked.