I'm hiking up this old mining road here in front of me. There isn't much left of
it right in the middle of the desert here. See all the prickly pear cactus everywhere? There
are some rock formations to my right. There is an abandoned mine up here, so we don't know
what's going to be accessible or what's going to be up here.
We are going to check it out. Here's some pretty spectacular scenery out here in the desert,
and here comes Justin from the Southern New Mexico Explorer YouTube channel.
He's coming up the old mining road.
We were just hiking up this mountain and found these two cool artifacts! Look at
this ore cart wheel just laying here on the side of the mountain! This thing is heavy!
This probably weighs how much? 20 pounds or 25 pounds? JUSTIN: "30 pounds maybe." Yes, that's a
an ore cart wheel. I think it's a of a more modern vintage because it doesn't have the
the fancy spokes -- I think they're called flanges or whatever -- like the old-time wheels have from
the early 1900s. That's a fully intact wheel. This piece of ventilation pipe or something
has the spiral metal with rivets. We've seen these at other mines. This probably dates this as being
pretty old. This isn't anything modern. It's probably from the early 1900s with those rivets.
Okay, we're making our way up this old mining road. That's Justin up there from
the Southern New Mexico Explorer channel, and we're headed to that waste rock pile
that you see right there in the center of the frame. This is a big abandoned mine that we're
going to check out. It's multi-level and very, very extensive, so let's go check it out!
Check out all these stacked rock walls as we're making our way up this
old mining road! We are headed over that way, and you can see more
stacked walls. The waste rock pile is right there and it's pretty big.
Here's a shot looking out of the portal. We are going to check this mine out.
We are just inside the portal, and this is the main haulage tunnel. It's a straight shot.
You can see Justin way up there. This goes in 800 feet to a large
room -- what the miners would have called a ballroom -- and that's where we're headed.
You can see in the floor the indentations where the cross-ties used to be from the ore cart
tracks which have long since been removed and probably used in other mines.
Right here is a little bat.
It's probably hibernating
for the winter. We are going to continue down this tunnel to the big room. This is
a really extensive mine and multi-level, so we plan on being in here for quite some time.
This is looking down into this vertical shaft inside the mine here in the main haulage tunnel.
You can see some old ladders there on the left. You can see the ladder or what's left of it.
That ladder is what the miners would have used, and the hoisting
car would have been on this side -- the right side. JUSTIN: "Do you see the roller?"
It has a roller in there that would have been used for the cable. I don't know if it's coming
out in the video or not. I zoomed in. Now I'm zooming back out, so let's check it out....
So we just came from that way and noticed right here some really nice colors
in the tunnel wall. There is some purple there coming down here, and then we're thinking about
heading down.... So this is continuing down the main haulage tunnel. Yes, this is all pretty much
part of the same stope that's underneath us. Looking down here
it goes into the stope. You can see that.
Yes, here's another another drop off
that goes into the stope. There are some big timbers down there.
We'll keep going down this way. We have a branch here at a Y intersection.
There is an ore chute here and maybe the end of the tunnel. I don't know.
So there must be a stope above us as well. That's why we're in the main haulage tunnel. This was the
level where they either brought ore down via these chutes or brought ore up from lower levels via
that vertical shaft that's back in the tunnel. This served as the main haulage tunnel for the
mine, and they would haul the ore outside to that big waste rock pile that you saw.
Here is that chute. It goes up into this stope. You can sort of see right here that it looks like
it goes up even higher behind those timbers there. So the chute is what that stope fed into chute.
The ore would tumble out of the chute into a waiting ore cart that would be on the tracks
right here. Then they would push the cart or have a burro or donkey attached to the cart and haul
it outside this way. We are about 800 feet in, so that's how far it would be to get to the portal.
Here is the right branching tunnel and it goes that way. Up above you can see more stoping.
This reminds me of Swiss cheese. These kinds of stopes just meander all over the place with all
these little openings, tunnels, and semi-tunnels. Let's go check out the tunnel that's right there.
There are some really cool colors here coming down right in this little pocket here. There is some
dark green right here. Let me zoom in.
I don't know what that is but.... JUSTIN: "It's malachite." Malachite, okay. JUSTIN: "Yes, that's
definitely malachite." Check out what's above there! There is a turquoise patch right there
and some green veins.
We are about to crawl back through this arch, and I noticed right here a dead
tarantula. I think it's dead. You can see it right there. It's a small one.
So there's the pile we just climbed over.
We squeezed through that little arch and came down here. Now we're headed down this tunnel.
The tunnel is curving here to the right
and it looks like it makes a hard right turn up here.
Yes, it's bending to the right
and then bending to the left.
Here's a -- oh, it's a dead end! I think that's a dead end. It looks like it is.
So in this tunnel there is a raise here going up. A raise is a shaft like this that's in a tunnel
ceiling and goes upward to upper levels. There is a workers' platform right there,
and that goes way up there! We are going to continue down the tunnel
this way, and I think Justin said there's a winze up here which is a shaft going downward in a
tunnel floor versus a raise which is a shaft going up in a tunnel ceiling. We'll see what's up here.
Okay, we just came from that way and check out these colors here above us! I hope that's coming
out in the video. There is some purple there and some golden tan color all through there.
According to Justin, we're going to climb up into this Swiss cheese stope. I think
we're going to go up this way right where that hole is. However, we could go this way
as well, but I think he wants to go this way. Here he comes!
JUSTIN: "That's what's nice about having a tight fissure --
four point contact."
We just came from that way, and we're making our way up through this
Swiss cheese stope. We were down there in the main tunnel. That is that rubble pile
we had to climb over down there. That rubble all came from right at this intersection.
Now we're going to head up this way on an angle and go higher into this Swiss cheese stope.
We just climbed up this series of ledges into this stope. It kind of continues up here
that way. While we were up here, we found this vintage Nestle Crunch
candy bar wrapper. The font on that is not current and there's no barcode on it or no UPC code or
anything, so that's a pretty old candy bar wrapper that one of the miners probably had. The miner had
a snack up here while they were working this crazy Swiss cheese stope. On the back of the wrapper
there is a slogan: Nestle's makes the very best chocolate.
So that's kind of a cool find up here. It pays to climb up into these areas that most people don't
go to because that's where you find some of these cool artifacts and stuff like that. So we're going
to head back down and continue exploring the main tunnels in this labyrinth of an abandoned mine.
We just came up from down there and now we're on another level. It continues this way,
and there is some rope that went up into another area higher up in the stope. We found some
dynamite up here right at the end of this drift level in the stope right here. Check this out!
Let me zoom in on that. There are several sticks of dynamite. Some of them are kind of mangled.
That's some old, leftover dynamite
right there.
We're in this stope here and check out all these different colors here above us. I don't
know if they are coming out in the video very well, but there's some purple, yellow, tan,
and some really dark purple right there.
There are also a lot of crystals as well. I don't know if the sparkling
is coming out in the video, but there are a lot of crystals.
There is more of the stope up that way.
We are making our way up through this crazy stope. We are at a junction here. There is a fissure
right here and
a vein right there where my light is. The vein is right in the center of my light. It's kind of
the line of demarcation, and that comes down into this fissure. We are going to continue
going up that way through this stope that is just continually going upward and upward.
Here is looking back towards the dynamite.
We are making our way through this stope on this level. Here is a ladder going up.
I think Justin went that way. JUSTIN: "I'm over here." Yes, you can see that this ladder
goes up not too far. We wont climb that because we don't know its integrity, and a lot of these rungs
are cracked or broken like right here. It's a no-go on that! The level continues
that way with some big, large round timbers there on the
tunnel floor. So from the ladder here let's go check out this intermediate drift level.
It looks like there's a vertical shaft up here going down.
This is really narrow!
So at the end of this drift level is a winze
going down. We were probably -- oh my gosh! -- that goes way down! There is a ladder here, but
that might bypass that lower level we were just on because this goes way down and we didn't
climb up that far in this stope. This might be a cut off shaft going to somewhere else.
Continuing past the ladder here, it looks like this turns to the left here and
stops right there. That's the face.