From Carbonado: Stories and Folktales

In August of 1960, shortly after the Carbon Hill Mine entrance had been dynamited, Jeff Mapes set out to trek the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier. An experienced hiker, Mapes parked his Ford pickup in Carbonado and, according to his friends and family, intended to explore the area near the sealed mine first.

Apparently, he either got a late start or took his time investigating the old mine outbuildings. Deciding to spend the night, he hunted for a place to camp and pitched his tent in an open, flat spot, with access to clean, pure drinking water.

A whole week passed. Mapes had arranged to meet some hiking companions at Sunrise Lodge along the trail encircling the mountain. His friends became concerned when Mapes did not arrive and contacted the National Park Service and the Forest Service.

Searchers located his parked pickup in Carbonado, safe and undisturbed. They found no trace of him at the mine, but in a nearby meadow next to a small spring, they came across his triangular tent – the side panel slashed from top to bottom. His sleeping bag remained inside, but badly shredded. Its stuffing, strewn about the interior, was dabbed with dried blood stains. His backpack was also missing.

The only remnant of Jeff Mapes was a bloody hiking sock containing a partly decomposed, mutilated foot at the lower edge of the meadow. The conclusion by the authorities? The victim was attacked by a wild animal – possibly a bear or cougar. Mapes became the twelfth documented person to disappear in the vicinity of Pardou’s Pit.

*  *  *  *  *

          One Wednesday in the middle of June, I sat on a white plastic lawn chair just inside the clubhouse and waited for Jason and Bear to arrive. The air warm and humid, I smelled the freshly mowed grass and the sawdust, remnants from some carpenter work Dad had completed in the shed.

        Nearly drifting off in a haze of thoughts, I jumped when Jason thrust his head through the door. “Gotcha!” He beamed a look of satisfaction.

        “Hey, you almost scared the crap out of me. Wouldn’t want to change my pants and wash this chair again.” He strutted inside, not noticing the changes to the shed, followed by a curious Brian who almost turned in a circle.

        “Wow! What’s been goin’ on? You got bunk beds on one side.” He jabbed a finger at the new additions braced by a wooden ladder leading to the bed on top. “Hey, I get the bottom one!” He scurried to climb in, stretching out on the tongue in groove flooring leftover from a failed project at our California home. “Kinda hard.” He wiggled into a sitting position, rubbing his lower back.

        “Yeah, we’re going to need air mattresses. My dad surprised me the other day. Said we’d need places for sleepovers this summer. He even made some storage shelves on the back wall.”

        Jason eyed the bunks with a wrinkled, wondering forehead. “They look great, but – but where do I sleep?”

        “No worry. Dad wanted to build another bed on the other end, but then we wouldn’t have room for chairs and a card table.” I waved my hand at the folded table leaning against the back wall. “When both of you stay overnight, a third mattress will fit on the floor on the other side.”

        Jason’s face brightened, and he slid the other lawn chair next to me.

        “Where’s Charlie?” asked The Bear.

        I shrugged and lifted my hands. “I called her this morning. Her sister said she was out gathering plant specimens.”

        “Figures,” Jason said. “She’s crazy about that stuff. Thought she knew all the plants around Carbonado.”

        Then we started yakking about stuff to keep us occupied. Since school wasn’t organizing our lives during summer break, we needed to take over the job. Left to our own imaginations, what was there to do?

        “We could give Heap Hill another go,” Jason suggested.

        “No way! That hill is boring. I don’t know about you guys,” added Brian, “but I’m ready for bigger stuff.” He puffed out his chest.

        “What stuff d’ya have in mind, Bear? As I think about it, we nearly had to haul you up Heap Hill, at least the first time.” Jason's voice dripped with sarcasm.

        Brian just sat there with his hands pressed together, his chest deflated, and his eyes pointed at the ceiling. A hush fell over the clubhouse.

        “What do you guys know about The Notch and Pardou’s Pit?” I broke the silence, grabbing their attention. “I’ve been reading a book telling stories about them. The stories are . . . kind of interesting.”

          “Interesting? Creepy is more like it,” retorted Brian. “Every once in a while someone goes out there and never comes back. Like about ten years ago two hikers turned up missin’. The search party only found one of their backpacks.”

          “But only after dark, right?”

          Brian and Jason leveled funny looks at me and, almost in unison, said, “How did you know?”

          “The book pretty much told me so. Everyone disappeared at night. That’s right, isn’t it?”

          “Yeah, that’s right, I guess,” answered Jason.

          “Have you guys ever been there?”

          “No way,” croaked the Bear. His voice was starting to change, and sometimes it broke. “Too creepy. And before our fitness routine, it was much too far for me to hike. Gee, it’s at least two miles away.”

          “I have,” said Jason in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

          “You have!” I was astounded that any town kid would trek all the way to the Pit. “So, what about it? Is it weird?”

          “It might be to some people, but I think it’s kind of pretty. It’s real quiet, and there’s a big, old maple tree that hovers over the clearing. I’ve made drawings of it a couple of times.”

          “Would you take us there?” I asked. “It would sure cure the boredom for today.”

          Bear’s mouth started to open in protest, but when Jason agreed, he closed it. Everything was settled. We set about finding the essentials to spend the afternoon exploring. I grabbed my backpack and handed my spare one to Brian. We filled two canteens with fresh tap water and made bologna and cheese sandwiches. I wrote a note to my mom, explaining that the three of us had gone exploring and to expect us back by dinner time.

          On the way out of town, we paused at Kelley’s Corner Mart to buy some treats for the trip. After pooling our money, we found we had enough for three small bags of chips, three cans of soda, and a half-dozen Snickers bars – for energy, you know. By this time, Brian exercised every day and had lost twenty pounds. All of us were in the best shape of our lives.

          Mr. Kelley made a comment. “Mr. Erdman, I haven’t seen you here for a while.” Brian really had cut down on snacks. “My, you are looking fit.” He then smiled and handed me the change.

          When we left, Jason asked him what Mr. Kelley’s remark was about. “Well, I guess he meant that I spent a lot more time at the store before climbing Heap Hill. More exercise -- less junk food.”

          Jason nodded.

          The road out of town led past the cemetery. “Wait, guys,” I shouted. “I want to check something out.”

          “Why? It’s nothin’ but an old cemetery.” Brian didn’t like spooky places.

          “Yeah, but cemeteries are cool. They can tell you about the history of a place. And you can find out if some things are true or not.” We wandered among the grave markers until I found what I was looking for. The head stone read Joshua Cabe, November 11, 1910 – July 5, 1926.

          “Why are you stopping?” wondered Jason.

          “This is the grave of the kid in the story about Pardou’s Pit. You know, the kid that stayed there overnight, went crazy, and killed himself.” Jason's eyes grew big, but he nodded like he understood what I was telling him. “This proves that the story I read is true.”

          “And you still want to hike out to the Pit?” Brian shivered. “If you want me to go with you, don’t tell me any more details.”

          Heading out of the cemetery, I found one more interesting thing. Four headstones in a row carried the names of men identified as coalminers. All died on the same day in 1889. I assumed that the old coal mine disaster had killed them. These graves gave testimony to the risks of the job.

          After skirting Heap Hill, we began hiking into terrain my feet hadn’t touched before. Jason said the trail followed the old coal route. I wondered what that meant when I spied the first of many concrete, wedge-shaped monoliths. They varied in height according to the lay of the land, but all of them measured at least ten feet tall. Bear chucked a rock at the first one, hitting it with a chunking sound before the projectile careened into the brush.

          “Just markin’ each one,” Brian explained. “Besides, it’s good to make noise in case there’s a bear around. Might even scare ‘em away.”

          I was curious, never having lived in a coal mining area. Studying about Carbonado and living here were two different things. “Hey, Jason, what were those big, concrete blocks used for?”

          “Well, they anchored the cables that carried the carts from the mine entrance to the sorting area around Heap Hill. Those huge blocks used to have iron arches sticking in them with a big, steel "T" crossing the top to hold the cables that moved the coal carts.”

          “So that’s what they look like. I read about those in my research paper, but this is the first time I’ve seen one.” They looked different than I imagined.

          “But I thought those old coal carts moved on tracks like little railroad cars.”  Brian commented. He didn’t seem to know much about coal mining around Carbonado.

          “They did at the mine,” Jason explained. “The carts went empty into the main tunnel on tracks and were pulled out after the miners filled them up with coal. After they got to the loading platform, men clipped hooks at the end of cables to the corners of the cart. They’d winch up the cart and leave the frame and wheels behind. An engine ran a pulley that took the carts down the hill to the place where they sorted the coal." He paused.

          "What happened from there?" I asked.

          "Well, they dumped out the carts on a conveyor belt, picked out the good stuff by hand, and sent the junk on the belt to the top of the slag heap. Then they hooked up the empty carts and sent 'em back to the mine. Just one big loop.”

          “Why didn’t they just build tracks from the mine all the way down to Heap Hill?” Brian asked.

          “Take a look at the path ahead of us.”  Jason pointed at a trail that traveled up and down hills until it disappeared around a bend in the distance. Every now and then another concrete support came into view. “It cost a bunch less to build a cable system that carried the carts over the hills than to dig up the ground and put in tracks.”

          “Wow, I never knew. Those guys back then were really smart.” Bear rocketed another stone off the next concrete base.

          While Jason explained all this stuff to us, I just scratched my head, filled with awe. “Hey, Jason, you’re an artist. How do you know so much about this whole coal mining thing? Have you been studying local history behind our backs?”

          Jason blushed. He almost never called attention to himself by spouting off tons of knowledge. “Well . . . I’ve been hiking out this way for a couple years. I’ve sketched some of this stuff and it’s a good place to be alone and think. When I first saw all these pillars, I got curious about what they were used for. So, I asked around. There’s still a lot of guys who used to work in the mines. Jake Ociepka, the old guy that pumps gas sometimes at the station – he used to work in the mine till it closed. I asked him about this stuff. Once he started talking, I couldn’t turn him off.”

          “Heck, if I’d realized how much you knew about this stuff, I wouldn’t have done so much library research for my history paper.” I chuckled and slapped him on the back.

          When the sun signaled it was past noon, we decided to stop at the base of one the pillars and pulled our lunches out of the backpacks. We had tramped uphill for at least an hour and our stomachs were growling.

          Sitting on the shady, north side of a coal route hulk, we pulled out our sandwiches and sodas and made fast work of them. We saved the little bags of chips to eat later with the Snickers bars. Then, strapping on our backpacks first, we continued hiking toward the Notch and Pardou’s Pit.

          The path forked, and Jason chose the trail that veered away from the mine route. The closer we got to The Pit, the darker it got, the branches swallowing the sunlight until the vegetation turned drab and dark. Bear started dragging his feet and falling behind until we were moving at a snail’s pace.

          I knew he was scared, but after a while, I got exasperated. “Bear, would you hurry up? We don’t have all day!”

          “Don’t worry. I’m comin’. Jeez, why are you guys in such a rush to see an old hole in the ground anyway?” Although he tried to act unconcerned, his voice sounded edgy. But he picked up his pace and rejoined us.