On Saturday morning, September 16th, I decided I'd spend the day checking out trails I've heard about which visit Knapp Ranch, an old historic ranch that is now forest service property in the Liebre Mountains, south of the 138, east of the Ridge Route.

"A Mr. Kelly who operated a gas station and restaurant on the nearby Old Ridge Route, in operation from 1915 to 1933, originally built the ranch, consisting of several houses. In the mid-1950's a wealthy businessman named Frank Knapp acquired the property and operated it for many years as a hunting lodge and horse ranch. After his death it was acquired by the Forest Service, about four years ago. One remaining wild stallion still roams there, which is confirmed by the abundance of horse droppings. The road is gated shortly above and below the ranch.

One of the tenants at the Knapp Ranch was an enigmatic mining promoter by the name of Annie Rose Briggs, who was active during the violent days of the Gillette Mine. She supposedly raised substantial sums of money by selling mining leases with stories of lost mines and buried treasure."
--Hugh Blanchard, http://angeles.sierraclub.org/hps/archives/hps01472.htm

Other mentions online of the area mentioned the Gillette Mine was nearby, so I loaded up the coordinates for the Gillette Mine in my GPS and headed off for the Ridge Route.

I arrived at my destination, gazed at the "Day" fire burning off to the southwest, beyond Pyramid Lake, and pedalled up the steep beginning of the forest trail. As I ascended, I noticed another column of smoke which seemed to me to not be part of the day complex; instead, it looked like it was on the east side of the 5. (I still don't know if this is indeed what I saw, it may have actually been a far east line of the Day fire, right up against I5.)

The trail began losing altitude, in some places, alarmingly fast, since I knew I'd have to pedal back up on the return trip. As I got to the bottom of the first large drop, the road made a crossing of what I believe is the headwaters of Salt Creek. A white truck was parked there, and I assumed that would mean I'd meet its' occupant on the road ahead, but I never did. As I turned the corner and the truck became visible, a small animal trotted up alongside the truck. I at first assumed it to be the truck owner's dog, but it had a bit different tail than your normal dog. I realized it was actually a fox, and scrambled for my camera. I was sure I wouldn't get my camera out of my backpack before the fox decided to split, but he stood right there and watched me pull out the camera and snap a couple pictures. After I knew I had a few good pics, I began to walk closer to him, for a better picture, and this spooked him back up into the bushes. I continued up towards him, and he held his ground, leading to the good, close pictures in my gallery. Eventually I became too close and he fell back a little bit more, still watching me. I figured I had enough, packed up my camera, and hopped back on my bike. Not 10 feet down the trail, I noticed something else; a big rattlesnake sunning in the trail. I believe the fox was actually mucking with the rattlesnake (I don't have any knowledge of a fox's diet to back this up :). So I unpacked the camera again and got a couple shots of the fat rattlesnake.

Continuing on from this little adventure, I pedalled across miles of nice wide, sometimes sandy doubletrack, with no more wildlife encounters, just an amazing view to the south. The only other notable thing I saw was a small tree that had very plainly been planted along a small fork in the trail that struck off southwards, down the mountain. Finally, the trail went over the final pass (marked by a huge mountainside meadow accented with a large sole pine tree) into the valley in which Knapp Ranch is located.

The trail plunged down into the valley. Near the ranch, the old ranch gates still stood, barring motor vehicle traffic. I read the blurb (seen above) regarding the one wild horse in the area, and I was skeptical. As I neared the ranch, the amount of horse poop started to make a believer out of me. There were great piles of it around. The ranch itself was very interesting. It consisted of three houses and numerous shacks and sheds under large cottonwoods and other large trees. I poked in some of the buildings, watching out for all the hazards (I found a large beehive in a tree near one of the houses). The pictures tell the story of the actual ranch better than I can.

After poking around the ranch, and taking a rest in a chair looking out a window with a southern view, I headed back to my bike, and decided that I would check out the Gillette Mine. After all, my GPS indicated it was only ~1.1 miles away. I knew from my reconnaissance on Google Earth that the trail to it was steep and windy, and it was. I climbed up something like 800 feet to a mountain pass, then plunged down into Bear Canyon on the other side. As I descended down Bear Canyon, I noticed a small complex of buildings off to the side of the Canyon.

When the trail reached the cool, green (but dry) bottom of Bear Canyon, it went straight to this complex. I thought that perhaps this complex *was* the Gillette Mine, until I continued a little farther and saw some newer equipment. I called out to see if anyone was about, and a man came out, explained that this was a private surface mining operation, and that the Gillette Mine itself was further down the road. I talked to him and his cousin for a good twenty minutes about the area. They were surprised to see me all the way back there on a bike. I learned that indeed there is a wild horse in the area, and he reported that they see the horse regularly. He was working the same operation when Frank Knapp still operated the ranch, and told some interesting stories about those days. I told them about the "new" fire I saw that may or may not have been on the east side of I5, and they were pretty interested in that.

I headed down and checked out some of the old junk near the Gillette Mine. There wasn't much to be seen besides some old roads cut into the side of the mountain and various pits and old rusted iron stuff.

I turned around and headed back up the trail to the truck, without signficant incident. The fire I saw was mostly out, apparently, its thick column of smoke reduced to a slight wisp. The trip back was exhausting, it was some 8 miles of nearly pure uphill grades of various severities. The total trip registered on my GPS as about 16 miles (which is probably a little lowball since the GPS loses some of the grain of the curves when it loses its signal), and a 3000 foot elevation loss/gain. I was out for a total of about 5 and a half hours.