Okay, here's another mine portal. Let’s go check it out! Check this out right here!
See that void in the arch? Above the arch it's somewhat unsupported there. This
rock is that real crumbly stuff that I was telling you about that's very characteristic
of the mines in this area. See what I’m talking about? So, yes,
that's a little sketchy. Let’s get in here. There’s a little bit of an erosion pile here.
Again, again it’s mostly all this soft rock that's come off, and it's almost like sand in a way.
Let me tell you what's so special about this mine. There’s cold air coming out of here, too!
If you remember last fall, Paul and i attempted to dig out an abandoned mine that's just located
on the other side of this hill from this mine. In fact, the two mines are separated by about
1100 feet as the crow flies, and the difference in elevation between their portals is about 76 feet.
I believe this is the higher one. So Paul and i were unsuccessful
in digging through that backfill. It turned out to be more substantial than we thought.
Because this mine is so close to that one and basically at the same elevation and
only a thousand feet away, I am hoping that there might be a connecting point in here.
So it looks like the tunnel goes up there, so let's go check it out!
Those roots coming through the rock right there kind of startled me when I looked over that way.
I thought it was a huge spider! Anyway, here's looking down the tunnel.
Yes, it goes straight. Actually there's a little bit of a collapse or backfill right there,
but we can get over that. I do feel airflow. So here's looking around at all these rocks. Let me
zoom in so you can see what I’m talking about. Look how fractured they are!
See that where my light is and right there? So this probably is not the most
stable mine to be in, but that's what they dug this one through.
Okay, here's that little collapse or backfilled area
right here in front of me. The tunnel continues there. You can see there is
something off to the left here.
Yes, there’s something off to the left there, but that looks like it's been backfilled
or it's just a dead end. There is definitely nowhere to go. That might have been a tunnel
there. Who knows? We will keep going straight. It looks like the tunnel curves off to the right.
This rock is more of a light gray color.
There are some timber remnants here on the floor.
That’s just a little dead-end alcove. Interesting….
The tunnel is curving to the right. Here are more timbers.
Okay, here's something going down.
The main tunnel continues that way. Let’s take the main tunnel and then we'll come back and
maybe check out those downward sloping passageways. Okay, here is a retaining
wall from a stope.
That stope goes way up there.
I don't know if that went any further. It may have. Those are big boulders,
and they must have came crashing down here and were stopped by this wall,
I guess.
So there may be upper levels to this mine.
Here is some graffiti.
“New repairing.” They must have had to repair this wall. Yes, I
see the boards behind, and then they put some new boards in front to give it more
strength. It looks like that's the new repairing that they're talking about.
Wow!
Here’s another passageway going up,
but it looks like it stops right up in there.
Wow! That goes up there kind of far,
but it looks backfilled. Let me see if I can zoom-in on that so you can see that.
See that right where my light is? It looks like that went further at one time but it's backfilled.
Oh wow! It went down, too! Look at that! Here’s a good example of gobbing where they stack the
rocks instead of taking them outside. There is gobbing all along there. Look at that!
That’s an inclined shaft. It looks like it might just stop down there.
I will check that out on the way back. Let’s keep going down the main tunnel!
Here is an inclined tunnel with some kind of a door. Let’s see if we can get this open.
Well, this door is not going to move. It’s somewhat
buried in the dirt here. That tunnel goes down there, and I don't know if it goes to the left
or not. It might. I mean to the right — it might go to the right. It’s hard to tell from here.
Maybe I’ll try to squeeze through there on the way back out. I can probably get through there.
It’s interesting that they put a door on this one for some reason. That makes me think maybe this
was a connecting point to the mine that Paul and I were trying to dig out. I don't know.
There’s an ore cart track here. One of them.
This goes up to an upper area.
Continuing down the main haulage tunnel….
Wow! You can really see the the layers there where my light is. The bands are kind of on a slant.
That’s just a dead-end down there.
And that's a dead-end up there.
The main haulage tunnel is blocked. I peeked over that rubble pile and further on the tunnel is
totally filled up. It’s backfilled so they must have stopped mining that part of the mine and
started using it to put the waste rock in. I found myself here at the bottom of an inclined shaft
that goes up. I can see some daylight up there. I don't know if it's coming out in the camera but it
looks like it gets pretty vertical up there. I’m going to go up here real quick and see
if there are any drift levels. There must be because we passed all those
inclined passageways coming down from above as we came down the main haulage tunnel back there.
It looks like this shaft goes to the surface which is interesting.
Well, there's the inclined shaft up there. It gets a little steeper as it goes up to the surface,
and it's filled with loose dirt.
I mentioned this earlier — maybe in another video — but it looks like the rock that is there is the
crumbly stuff. Then there is the not so crumbly stuff which is that tan colored rock. See how it
alternates? Back there is the crumbly stuff then there's a layer of the tan stuff, then
crumbly stuff, then tan stuff, and look how the crumbly stuff has scratch marks on it.
I wonder if that's from them digging this by hand or if that's from the miners using a scaling bar
to test the integrity of that crumbly stuff because I don't see any scratch marks on the tan
rock. I have a feeling, however, that this was probably dug by hand. I haven't seen
any blasting holes like we normally find in abandoned mines. So I am going to try to get up
there a little bit more just to see if I can see out. Let me get up there. It looks like there's
been some water coming down here recently as indicated by that dark streak right there.
That’s a shot looking up the inclined shaft to the surface. It looks like there's a wooden
collar up there around the opening. I’m really having a hard time getting up this rubble.
This dirt is really loose! That’s why I don't like coming down these kinds of inclines when
they have this loose dirt because it's very hard to get back out. I’m even sliding down right now
as I’m filming this because this dirt is just so loose! I don’t see any drift levels going off.
That’s interesting because there are upper areas above the main haulage tunnel, but
there's no access to them from this main inclined shaft or what looks like a main inclined shaft. I
will say there's a bat in here. He flew over my head and back into the mine behind me.
Right behind me in the rubble are some animal droppings from a fox or something like that. So
something is coming in here and coming down this inclined shaft about halfway to
relieve itself. That’s kind of interesting because this is kind of a strange place to do that.
Yes, you can see how loose this dirt is. This is really hell trying to climb up. That’s looking
down the inclined shaft, so I’m going to go back down there to the main haulage tunnel,
turn left, and check out some of those inclined passageways that
are going down off to the right as we head back through there.
I just came back down the inclined shaft that goes up there to the right. Now we're back in
the main haulage tunnel, so let's go check out some of those inclined passageways that go down
and see if there's a connection to that mine Paul and I were trying to dig out last year.
By the way, I just noticed right here in front of me are some blasting holes. So they did use
dynamite in here! This wasn't dug by hand. There are three blasting holes right there.
The piece of metal you see there is called a “muck plate.”
I didn’t see that coming through here the first time. The miners would put that down on the tunnel
floor when they were blasting so all of the rubble from the blast would fall onto the metal sheet.
That made it a lot easier to shovel the rocks into an ore cart. They called it a muck plate because
the blasted debris was referred to as “muck” and the miners whose jobs were to remove the muck
were called “muckers.” We are heading back down the main haulage tunnel this way. So they did
use dynamite in here. It wasn't dug by hand. Those scratch marks on the crumbly bands of rock
are probably from a scaling bar. They would use that to see if any of the rock was
ready to fall off or basically delaminate.
Okay, here's the first one. That doesn't go anywhere so I can't go down that one.
Here is this inclined passageway with the wooden door that is stuck in this position.
I’m looking down there and that's a dead end. I can see down there that it doesn't go anywhere,
so let's check out the other ones that are nearer to the portal.
Okay, this inclined passageway looks like it stops down there. See that?
I’m not going to go down this one either. Look at how they put support timbering on both sides and
then stacked all this gobbing behind it! I think this was just a big stope.
What they did was put the waste rock in the stope and then fenced it off with these support beams.
We are in a big stope, I guess, that's punctuated every so often with one of these inclined
passageways which probably allowed access. When they were done, they put all the waste rock
in areas of the stope that they weren't working or using anymore. See that? It’s pretty amazing!
This inclined passageway is also a dead end. I can see down there. It doesn't go anywhere.
So these are all pretty much the same length. They are not very long and they all go down
on a 45 degree angle and basically stop. There’s the portal. That’s a welcome sight! Unfortunately
this mine did not connect up with the other mine that's on the other side of the hill.
I thought maybe it might, but it didn't.
That is kind of a cool picture there with the sunlight, the backfill, and the blocked portal.