I just hiked up through this. This is looking down the ravine. I'm in a ravine
headed uphill this way towards an abandoned mine.
Now this is pretty dense brush here, so I don't think a lot of people get to this particular mine.
I'm not even sure if it's open, but there's one tunnel indicated on the map.
It's in the middle of nowhere. That's where we're headed. Here's looking around.
It's pretty forested here.
I'm coming across a lot of this rock here. I don't know if these are waste rocks or tailings
or if they are just natural erosion because I'm in a wash.
I really haven't seen any other artifacts like rusted cans or bottles.
Not too much further up here there should be a an open adit. I hope it's open!
I think that right there might be the waste rock pile.
See that right there below that tree? It looks like it gets flat up on top there, so
I think that might be where the mine is. Let's go check it out!
So I'm standing on top of the waste rock pile. This is kind of substantial.
The mine should be right
back in here. I think I feel cold air already blowing out. Oh, there it is! I can see it!
I don't think a lot of people come up to this one.
They have it fenced off up there.
I see daylight inside the tunnel there. It looks like it may be collapsed.
All right, let's get a little closer! So there's the portal to the mine. It looks like it might
have caved-in there. Just inside the entrance there you can see daylight coming down from above.
Well, here is the portal. I have to get in here and see if the tunnel beyond is still passable.
Like I said, it looks like the ceiling collapsed and it might have totally sealed off the tunnel.
So I'm going to crawl through here. You can see the tunnel there in the back. It has a bunch of
sticks in front of it or tree roots or something. See it there? So I have to crawl through this mess
and see if that's still open. It looks like it's open, so it's probably worth the crawl.
I got through the opening, and I'm not sure what happened here. Did this cave-in?
There are a bunch of holes here leading to the outside.
I think the tunnel is right here to the left. Let me get in there past
these tree branches -- I think those are tree roots -- and see if the entrance is passable.
So I'm not sure if that was the original entrance and then it came in here
and kind of went this way or what. I think where I came in, which is right back there, was the main
portal according to the topographic map. I think all this here is just erosion. That's just erosion
that opened up an erosion hole. But, yes, the tunnel does continue here past these tree roots.
Let me get down there to see if this is worth going into.
I am going to have crawl on my stomach. I don't know. Let me get a little bit closer.
Here is a better look at the erosion pile and looking down into the mine. It does look like
it goes off to the left for sure, but I'm not sure about the right. I can't quite see.
This pile is mostly made up of compacted,
very fine dirt. That can be a problem coming back up out of the mine. The dirt might just
constantly give way, and I would hate to get stuck in something like this.
I have to check this out a little bit more and then make my final
determination if I'm going to go in here or not. But I will tell you that
nobody has been in here. This is one of those really remote, obscure mines. It's probably
not that extensive, but nobody bothers to come to this one. I can tell that because
there is no trash up here and this looks like it hasn't been disturbed in quite some time.
That spider just crawled right past me here at the entrance and stopped. Maybe he's waiting for
me to make a move. I don't think that's a black widow. No, I don't think it is.
That spider is probably surprised that somebody is in here making all this disturbance.
Well, I made it through. I just hope I can get back out. I think I can,
but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. So looking down inside the portal here,
yes, it looks like the tunnel does go off to the right and left. Let's go check it out!
Inside here this is like a little chamber. Oh! There is a spider! Look at all those
spiders up there in that web! There is a bunch of spiders. Are those black widows? Let me zoom in.
Yikes! There are three spiders! Two are moving and that one in the center is not.
That's not coming into focus, is it? So the tunnel does continue that way to the right,
and here to the left it looks like there's a big shaft right there -- a big pit. You can tell there
are no footprints in here and that this hasn't been disturbed in quite some time. I am probably
the first one in here in a long time. This is the mine that's full of black widow spiders or
whatever those spiders were in that web at the entrance behind me. Let's go check out this pit!
It looks like that goes down and maybe becomes inclined underneath me. This might be a false
floor here. It might be undercut by that shaft. It does feel kind of soft here.
Of course it's a dirt floor. You can see the dirt there. I'm not going to get too much closer
to that because this could all just cave-in. It does sound really soft here for some reason
under my feet, so let's go back and take the tunnel to the right. There is the entrance
and all those tree roots coming down. Check that out! I'm not sure what was mined here.
I'll put in a caption once I find that out if I can.
Here are all these different layers in the rock.
Yes, there are no footprints in here whatsoever.
I don't smell that skunk smell like I did when I was up there at the entrance.
It's pretty dry in here. I thought it might be damp, but it's not. Here is a
turn here that's kind of like a zigzag turn. Oh gosh! It looks like down there is a little bit of
a stope in there. You can sort of see same thing over here. There is another little opening into a
stope. So I bet this tunnel wraps around here and turns into a stope. Okay, we have a split here.
This is a dead end. Here are remnants of some kind of box -- probably an explosives box.
So back in the main tunnel this is a little bit of gobbing here where they
stacked up the rocks. I don't know if this went anywhere. It's probably a dead end.
This keeps going.
Look at that! There is a hole!
I have seen this in mines before. It's not very common.
There will be a hole like this that leads into another area. Let's see what's in here..
It looks like a little chamber. There has got to be a way into that from back in the main tunnel.
You don't see that very often.
So I'm heading back towards the entrance.
I bet that chamber behind that hole in the wall is right back this way. That's where that goes,
so I don't need to go back there. What's interesting is up here....
Well, here's an access to the stope that we saw earlier.
This is the same one. Let's see what's down there.
That drops down there. I'm not sure how far that goes, but that's a vertical drop off. I bet that
whole area down there connects up with that shaft that's right inside the entrance to the left.
That is probably how you access all that down here. You use the shaft
that was at the entrance. Let me toss a rock in here and see how deep this is.
Let's do one more.
Well, it might just be 20 or 30 feet deep. I don't know. I'm not going down there, that's for sure!
That shaft at the entrance is how you would access all of that. So that's where we were,
and I guess that's it for this mine. So most of the waste rock that's outside which looks
somewhat substantial all came from down in there. There might be tunnels down there that go off.
So that's where all that waste rock came from. This was just a haulage tunnel.
We
are making our way back to the portal.
Look right here! There is a little hole there. They were starting to dig on this side, too.
So this whole main tunnel may be undercut by a stope, and that's what I sort of sensed up
by the shaft. It seemed like the floor sounded like it was hollow underneath.
That's right there, so they must have had a ladder in there at one point and probably some kind of a
hoist to get the ore up and out. Now I have to see if I can get back out of here. Sometimes
it's easy getting in but getting back out can be tricky because the angles are different.
Well, I made it out with no problem. This is a very strange entrance with all these
openings here and above me. I'm not sure what was happening here. This rock here
is not crumbly, but I don't know -- it just seems fragile for some reason. I
don't know what that is. And then the main entrance that I came through has this rock
which is kind of reddish. I don't think there is quartz in there. Definitely some
interesting rocks here, that's for sure! There's the portal, so let's get out of here.
So this is looking out through what was the entrance here.
That was a strange little mine, that's for sure!