Went out for the first time last weekend and the gate was closed. Looked it up on gps and decided instead of hiking the 5 miles up the road, I will take a more direct route to claim since I didn’t get there til 130pm. By 530 pm I was looking down from the last mountain I had to climb at the road to claim where you can enter claim. Only took 4 bottles of water when I started out and I 2as down to 1 bottle when I started down. By 15pm I made it to the road, exhausted, dehydrated and now faced an upward incline hike back to the gate. The sun was starting to go down and at that point I was starting to get nervous. I took a 30 lb backpack for prospecting the claim, but never made it. I like to hike and if wasn’t for what I felt like survival I couldn’t have kept going. Almost 30,000 steps and 140 flights of stairs per my phone. I did take a head lamp, flashlight and pistol with me in case. When the sun went down, and I put my headlamp on I looked up and saw eyes all over on one side of the road and one set of eyes up a bit from the road with nothing around it on the other side. Yes, fear crept in as I walked with my flashlight pointing behind, headlamp pointing ahead and pistol at the ready. I knew better than to put myself in that situation. Take the road, do not hike in to center of claim. Steep climbing, drop offs, animal tracks and heavy mineralization most of the way in to Piru creek. Be smarter than I was. I truly feel lucky to have made it. What I did get to see from up high, I can’t wait to get back to the claim when the gate is opened back up to the road.