Good question. When my nephew chickened out on Aug. 12 and I had to turn the passes back to the RD office, I was stuck with a day in which to attempt to entertain an 11-year-old who behaves like a 6-year-old. I took him back to Horseshoe Meadow instead, where he fished and I read a book.
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/hikeofyourlife/horseshoemeadow.html">Click here for image</a> (Geocities won't allow posting of photos from other web sites, dem spammers)
After that he swam in Diaz Lake for a couple hours, then we fished some more in Tuttle Creek, then tried our hand at gold-panning that creek. We didn't find anything interesting other than some finely polished granitic rock, especially quartz, but it was fun nonetheless. No sub for Whitney...I'm never asking an inner-city kid to do anything with me again, a year's worth of planning went down the drain with his attitude that anything harder than tying up and casting a hook or turning on the TV is too hard. Looks like this year's Portal hike will be Meysan Lake next Monday. I'm up for that.
Meanwhile, the information I can find on placer mining the Sierra all comes from the Western slopes. Perhaps someone can direct us to a place along 395 that might have the most basic of implements, especially a real gold pan instead of some cheap Ziplock sandwich container like we were using last week.
Thanks!
