2011 Edition
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Finally found it! The East Portal of the Crown Zellerbach Trail train tunnel.
This tunnel was abandoned some 70 years ago and is obviously in very poor condition.
However, we could see light at the end of the tunnel (literally) so it's still
at least somewhat intact. We had no plans to go inside on this trip and had no
equipment for doing so. Still.... very happy to actually find the entrance.
Still need to find the West portal before even considering traversing the length
of this tunnel. The timbers are of course in very bad shape but the ceiling rock
looks to be fairly solid, at least close to the entrance. Considering the long, cold
Winter we've had, there's no telling what sort of critters we'd run into inside.
We hiked for about 9 miles looking for the West portal, without any luck. According
to the GPS coordinates I had (which were obviously wrong) the tunnel should be right
about where this not-so-friendly greeting sign is. The trail to the East portal is
right off the CZ Trail where you see this "box with dials". By hiking standards, the
trail we followed was somewhat faint but it has seen some recent use. The tunnel is
less than 1/4 mile from this marker.
The opening was quite a bit larger than I expected and is a LOT bigger than this
picture indicates.
The tunnel is pretty beat up inside though. There's a lot of material on the ground
to walk over. But there is a wide trail where people have obviously been inside.
Whether they walked to the other end remains to be seen. It's too big and dark inside
to see much and my small but powerful LED lamp was pretty much useless.
I should have taken Julie's picture using her camera like she asked me to. Mine
wanted to control the lighting and obviously did a crappy job of it.
Spring is right around the corner.....
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