Beveridge is a legendary place. The mining camp is one of the most inaccessible gold-mining sites in California. It is a place few people ever see.
The standard approach today starts on the crest of the Inyo Mountains at nearly 10,000 foot elevation at the New York Butte Trailhead, reached by a treacherous four-wheel-drive road for experienced off-roaders only. From the trailhead it is a strenuous drop of more than 5,200 vertical feet down Beveridge Canyon to the ghost camp and Lasky's stamp mill. An 1880 correspondent for the Inyo Independent described the canyon walls as "so nearly vertical in most places as to be inaccessible to anything without wings." That has not changed.
The mill still stands, and hidden buildings and equipment remain scattered through the canyon for those who go looking. The canyon walls tower 2,600 feet above the camp. A creek runs through the bottom, choked with willows (Salix spp.) and California wild rose (Rosa californica). Bring clippers. Beveridge is a place that has to be earned. It stays with the people who make the trip, and it pulls them back.
My photos here are from a brutal fourteen-hour day hike I made in the spring of 1996, coming in from the Snow Flake Mine on the lower eastern slope. That road washed out years ago. Hugh took the route described in the directions below. My friend Brian was kind enough to provide photos from a couple of his trips as well. See below.
Hiking up from the Snow Flake Mine. Circa 1996.
