About a month and a half ago, after hiking in Jordan Canyon, I wanted to know how old the roads in the area were and how long they’ve been closed. My research led, naturally, to the gas wells that those roads were constructed for. As I was casually scrolling through one of the well reports I read something unexpected–an accident report about a death that occurred at the well in Seeley Canyon in 1961. Walter Kent Riley was killed after a hose ruptured and was leaking natural gas in the well cellar. He climbed down the ladder to close a valve and shut off the flow but was overcome by methane and fell into the cellar, drowning in 18 inches of standing water at the bottom. I would have eventually hiked into Seeley Canyon anyway but for some reason this made me move it higher on my priority list and I went there on Labor Day weekend. The day before, though, I visited Mr. Riley’s grave just a few blocks from home.
Walter Kent “Dick” Riley, August 22, 1917 – July 13, 1961
At 6:30 on Sunday morning I arrived once again at the same trailhead where I’d parked in July, but this time the gate was locked and there was no logging going on. It was a relief not having to worry about logging trucks while I walked the 1/2-mile on the road before veering off into Seeley Canyon. I followed the old road, closed since 1976, another mile up to the gas well. The road was much like those in the other canyons in the area, sometimes completely discernible as a road and others invisible, and often with a single trail through the vegetation from use by animals and hunters. There were a lot of aspen trees but very few with carvings, and those I did see were all pretty new.
Locked gate
Old road to Seeley Canyon (left) and new road to Jordan Canyon (right)
Road into Seeley Canyon
Gas pipeline
Trail on the old road
Trail on the old road
First sunshine of the day
I arrived at the well location shortly after the sun made its appearance over the horizon. I expected to get a creepy or eerie feeling there but it was actually the opposite. It was heartening to see that whoever had welded the pipe marking the abandoned well had remembered Mr. Riley 15 years after his death (it was plugged and abandoned in 1976) and left a small tribute to him. I’d looked at some 1965 aerial imagery of the well pad and noted the locations of what appeared to be a small building, pump jack, and some sort of pit (possibly the well cellar), but the only thing left was a small concrete foundation around the pipe where I assume the pump jack was.
Site of Joe’s Valley No. 3 gas well
Pond
Abandoned well marker
R.I.P.
1965 aerial image of Joe’s Valley No. 3 gas well
Next I continued up the road, taking the left fork which ended at another gas well. Well, a pair of wells, number 5 and number 5X. The drilling equipment became stuck in the first well so they moved the rig and drilled another hole nearby, but both were plugged and abandoned by 1960. The trail I had been following, national forest trail 386, is shown on the USGS map climbing straight up 700′ to Skyline Drive here, but there was no sign of an actual trail.
Drainage pipe from the old road
Overgrown road
Olympia beer can
Left fork in the road
Left fork of the road
Joe’s Valley No. 5 and 5X gas wells
Spring
Supposed route of trail 386
Instead of following the road back, I used a game trail to shortcut over to the right fork in the road and then followed it up to the ridge dividing Seeley and Jordan canyons. This is the same ridge I hiked up on my prior trip to Jordan Canyon and followed to Skyline Drive.
View down Seeley Canyon toward Seeley Mountain
Game trail
Naked lady
1998?
Upper Seeley Canyon panorama
CCC terraces
Game trail nearing the road
Back on the old road
Head of the canyon below Skyline Drive
Road climbing up to the ridge
CCC terraces
This time, however, instead of going west to Skyline I hiked east to point 10,440′. Some things had changed since I was last here six weeks earlier. Somebody had placed rock salt in many places on the old well pad, presumably for wildlife or livestock. The new logging road on top of the ridge had been reclaimed. And, most surprisingly, the road down in Jordan Canyon which had been torn up was now repaired. I made it to point 10,440′ and only briefly enjoyed the views before descending back down into Seeley Canyon.
Salt
Colleen K. Steiner No. 1
More salt
Road into Jordan Canyon
Jordan Canyon road now repaired
Reclaimed logging road
Coal on the ground, probably from an old boiler
Game trail to point 10,440′
Point 10,440′
View into Jordan Canyon
View down Jordan Canyon
Cleveland Reservoir in the far distance
Instead of following the old road I bombed straight down the CCC terraces, aiming for a prominent game trail that I’d noticed on the way up but I never did locate it on the hillside. Once back in the basin I found a shady spot to sit down and enjoy lunch before hitting the road back to the trailhead. I found a broken arrowhead right in the middle of the trail on the road down. My total distance ended up being a little over nine miles, with 1,600′ elevation gain. I learned an awful lot about drilling in general just trying to decipher the reports for the wells in this area, reading websites and watching videos about drilling and fracking. It was crazy reading that they injected 30,000 gallons of diesel oil at high pressure into one of these wells to frack the target formation to produce more gas! But learning about one of the people involved in drilling the gas wells made this trip a little more special.
Down the terraces to a game trail
Back into the basin
Following the road down the canyon
Nice but illegible writing
Broken arrowhead
Photo Gallery: Seeley Canyon