Well, I'm just inside the portal of this abandoned mine,
so let's go check it out! That's looking out. You can see the erosion pile there that I
had to slide down. It’s almost all the way up to the top of the arch!
Now I’m making my way down this main haulage tunnel.
I’ll tell you that it's nice and warm in here! It’s about
40 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now. In here it's probably closer to 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
Here we’ve got some old timbers down here.
And here are some timbers up in the overhead. That one is burned, and this is probably…
It looks like this might have been a place to store dynamite.
All these timbers here and other stuff mean there was probably shelving in here,
so this was the dynamite storage locker, I'm guessing.
Okay, we’ve got some ore cart tracks here!
Rusted
tracks.
This must be a bat roosting place due to all this guano
on the ground. I think that's bat guano. Usually you see it in piles like that, and that means
they usually hang out right above the pile. I don't see any bats,
however. I guess the bats use the same roosting spots over and over in these abandoned mine.
We’ve got a little bit of a turn here to the left.
It looks like there is some more stuff up ahead! Let’s go check it out!
Okay, we’re making some turns here.
It looks like that was an arrow there. That may have gone somewhere. I can see some
timbers in there on the side — support timbers. But that's been totally backfilled or caved in.
Over here is just a dead end.
Yes, I do believe there's a vertical shaft higher on the hillside, so some of this may
have been connecting up with that such as right there. You can see the ore cart tracks
made a split here at one time and did go that way but not anymore.
The tracks just keep on curving there.
That’s another area where it looks like it might go somewhere, but I'm going to
stick to the main tunnel for now. You can see the tracks ahead curving there to the left.
It’s
been quite some time that I’ve been in a mine that has this many curves in it.
This is really kind of meandering all over the place. Okay, so above here in the tunnel
you see support timbers there with other timbers placed perpendicular. That probably goes up into a
stope which is a large chamber that the miners were mining in. There is probably a ton of…
No, there isn't. But look! It does go up!
There is a ladder there. See the ladder?
That’s interesting. That must go up to upper areas. I thought this was
going to have waste rock on it, but looks like it does right in that section. It’s walled-off right
there. All the waste rock is behind those timbers, and this was either a ventilation raise or
maybe an emergency escape. There is a ladder, but we can't get up there.
Yes, you can see all the rocks here that are resting on these timbers.
Wow! Those support timbers are
almost a foot in diameter! I think that one is more than a foot in diameter!
Look at how neatly all the timbers were laid in place. All the rocks are on top of them.
Wow! Look at this! It continues and goes up there at an angle, and then it comes down to an angle.
That’s pretty impressive! I wonder why they made the ceiling go up here?
There might have been something sitting right here such as a piece of machinery
perhaps. I don't know. Maybe they needed to have extra clearance for it.
That’s a dead end there. Check that out — that’s looking back the way we came.
That is pretty impressive, but there's a lot of weight on those rocks. One day
this will all collapse.
It continues this way as well.
Here you can sort of see up. Here’s another kind of dead end raise. But look at that! There is a
lot of timbering in this mine. I wonder why they kept this little area cleared out
unless that was for ventilation. The timbers there are missing, so
I don't know. It’s hard to figure out what was going on in these mines.
This mine dates back to the late 1800s and early
1900s. Or something like that. Here’s more of the ceiling, and it stops right here.
That might go somewhere. We’ll check that out on the way back.
Let’s keep following the ore cart tracks. It looks like this is some miner’s graffiti.
I can't quite tell what that says or what that's supposed to be. It almost looks like a
pig nose right there with two eyes above it.
I don't know. Miners would have made that with their carbide lights or their carbide's lanterns.
Yes, there’s kind low clearance here. That’s a dead end.
Here is more of this crazy ceiling!
Wow!
Check that out! It’s amazing that some of these timbers are burned, too, which is kind of strange.
You would think they all would be burned if somebody was lighting fires in here.
Let’s take a look back.
You can see that there's a level on top of the ceiling. The miners would sometimes stand on those
timbers as they worked the stope. That would be a false floor, and from down here it's a ceiling.
Let’s keep going forward!
Okay, we're headed that way, but we're in another chamber here.
You can sort of see up there in the ceiling (or what they would call the “back” of the
mine) what looks like a seam right where my light is. It’s kind of like a seam.
That may have been the vein or the seam they were following. See that?
It comes down right there in the tunnel arch. I bet that's what
they were following and what they were mining.
Over here we have one of the resident bats.
I'm not sure what's going on here.
Let me get up there and check this out to see if it's passable.
Okay, we can't go any further. That’s pretty much backfilled all the way to the top, but
the strange thing is I can feel airflow coming at me kind of consistently. That must not be a very
thick or deep plug, but I'm not going to punch through there. Yes, there's definite airflow here.
I’m surprised that there's airflow because of the way we just came.
You know, we're pretty far in and just came from that way.
Anyway, let's head back and check out some of those branches and see if they're passable.
A lot of people ask what are these wooden stakes that they always see in the tunnels
near the ceiling. Here’s one more down here. The wires hanging from
the wooden stakes were used to either hang the ventilation tubing or hang electrical
lights and things like that. Those stakes are really, really common in these abandoned mines
and are often some of the only artifacts besides the ore cart tracks that are left in place.
Okay, this one branching tunnel I'm checking out on the way back out looks like it was just
completely backfilled almost all the way to the ceiling. I can see the face of the tunnel there
at the very end, so that doesn't go anywhere. If it did, there's no way to access it. There’s
no need to go crawling through there, so let's head back out to the main haulage tunnel
and continue our way back out to the portal.
So in all of this timbering they used part of an old dynamite box as a wedge. See that? It
says — it's upside down, so I can't quite see what that says. It says “something explosives.”
I'll be able to see that when I get home and look at the footage while zoomed-in. But, yes, that’s
part of an old dynamite box, so the miners were pretty thrifty. They used whatever they could
to make ends meet. Here are more wedges that are just pieces of lumber
stuck in place. Yes, that is part of an old explosives box.
Well, make no bones about it — that's definitely an animal skeleton!
Probably cattle. There is a lot of free-range cattle out here roaming these hills.
So those are mountain lion tracks. They probably come to this puddle to drink after they're done
feasting on all those bones. Definitely lots of paw prints everywhere right there.
Those paw prints come up to here, and I think maybe a mountain lion was
trying to get into the marrow. See that there? See that light brown, golden colored stuff?
I think that's what they do. They come up here — mountain lions or whatever — and gnaw on these
bones. I’m probably standing in a mountain lion kill zone and should probably get out of here.
Here’s looking around.