Well, this is me standing at the edge of a waste rock pile. It goes down here in front
of me. That's pretty big! That's looking across the valley. Unfortunately, though,
the portal for this waste rock pile that I just showed you is right up here in front of me,
but it's totally and completely eroded shut. A lot of the mines out here
have portals which are still open even though they're eroded, but this one you can see
there's nothing left of it. It would have been right in there.
You would have to dig that out, and that would be a lot of work.
Again, here's a really great view. There's the waste rock pile and all that country beyond.
So Nick and I came up here to this eroded portal and dug around for about five minutes right here
and found a gap with cold air blowing out of it! So we actually found the portal!
See where his shovel is going in there, and we can feel the cold air blowing out. It's like a breeze!
So just by blind luck and within five minutes we chose to start digging right here. We could have
dug anywhere on this erosion pile, but we picked the right spot. NICK: "I mean we may not get in
until we do a lot of work, yes, but we found the opening, and we had to hike a lot to get up here!"
Yes, this was pretty hard to get to. NICK: "This is satisfying." TRACI: "This is very satisfying!
Yes, it's going to take work to get in here but...."
Okay, so we're making some progress. You can see the hole there.
We can look in there and see both or at least the left side of the tunnel wall. Nick said he
saw some timbers laying on the ground in there, too. There are massive amounts of air coming out
of there. We've only been doing this for about 30 minutes, but we've made a lot of progress!
So here is the eroded portal that we spent about an hour
digging out. A lot of air blowing out of there. That was a lot of work!
Usually when you dig out these portals, it takes forever or never works.
We just lucked out by picking the right spot to start digging and broke through within five
minutes. So let's go in and check it out! Nobody has been in here probably in over 100 years,
so who knows what we're going to find.
There is the portal we came through. You can see where we dug it out. You
can see the erosion pile there where my light is.
There is an old, wooden door here that used to be blocking the mine right there.
There are no footprints in here whatsoever because we're the first ones in here in over a century.
We'll go check it out. Here is an old can already -- a rusted, old can. Who knows
what we're going to find in here if anything! NICK: "It's already worth the effort." Yes,
this is cool! So we're headed that way. NICK: "Let's go!" So one thing that always concerned
me about digging out a mine that's been totally sealed is the oxygen level. We have oxygen meters,
and we just reset them at the entrance. If there's low oxygen, we'll be alerted.
There was some of this outside the mine, too,
this metal strapping. They might have used that for the ore cart tracks.
Here's a little bit of collapse or backfill, and Nick said the tunnel is a T-intersection.
TRACI: "Going right as a group." It's a dead end here straight ahead but here's the T-intersection.
I'll try to get up to this without falling.
Oh, there's some timbering up there maybe. We'll go to the right.
TRACI: "These are some decent-sized crystals."
Here's a little alcove, but there's something major up here.
I think Nick said there's a ladder system.
Check this out!
Oh yes! That goes way down there! Look at that! I have to zoom-in on that.
NICK: "That ladder looks doable almost." It does! NICK: "I would have to move it
around a bit to see how rotted away it is first.
I am going to have to shimmy my way across here. I don't want
to get too close to there. It's really eroded." That's as far as i can zoom in.
Let me zoom back out.
Look at the colors there in that pillar! NICK: "It's got a second level up there!" How's that
ladder? NICK: "It's out of reach." Okay, we just came from that inclined shaft back there. Nick
made it across but the mine didn't go too much further past that and eventually faced out. So
we all decided that Traci and I would not go past the shaft. It was too dangerous and
we're just not that skilled. Here's the junction. We have to go that way. That was a dead end,
and the portal that we dug out is that way that. It looks like there's some backfill way down
there. Let's go check it out! Boy, lots of colors in here! Green, yellow, gray, red, and purple.
There is some backfill here that we're making our way over. Not sure where this came from but....
It's low clearance here.
No footprints whatsoever!
It's pretty cool being inside a mine that's been sealed up for probably a century! I think we can
go over this pile. I see the tunnel continuing beyond it. Let me get up here and check it out.
Well, here's the top of the of the backfill, and it keeps going. There are more piles
of backfill further in the tunnel. See that?
Lots of amazing colors in the ceiling there!
We just came from that way. I let Nick and Traci pass me. We're going to make our way down here,
but my helmet light just flashed so that means I have to change batteries.
Yes, my helmet light just blinked. I'll get up here. NICK:
"Let's take a rest, and I need a new battery in mine, too."
Okay, so we all just changed out our batteries. I know my helmet battery was blinking so....
Okay, here is more backfill. TRACI: "After this hump you need to stay to the right." Why? TRACI:
"We think there might be a small pocket but we're not sure if it
falls through. There is enough space, but I'm just letting you know to stay to the right." Okay.
Okay, we have to go down here. We are going to avoid going over there because that may be a
shaft or something. I have to go that way.
Well, that's the end of the mine right there.
It's what the miners call the "face."
There's a carbide
drawing right there. It's a circle with a dot,
but don't know what that means. That was done by a miner.
So we're going to make our way back.
We're making our way back over these backfill piles, and that's where we just came from.
There are just massive amounts of backfill in this particular branch.
You can see what we have to climb over. You can see Nick and Traci up there.
We are still making our way back to the junction.
I'm in a little chamber here with lots of different colors all around me.
It's pretty spectacular! We are headed back that way.
Here is a better shot of that door. I pulled it up. Look at the craftsmanship on that door!
There is the original...there is the original bracket for the hasp. Just think -- that bracket
dates back probably to the 1860s or 1870s even
though it's all rusted. Here is the door frame. So we are going to make our way out again. This
is what we dug out. Pretty impressive! We totally got lucky with this! Let's get out of here.