Well, I’m in Mazourka Canyon looking down the road I just drove up in the old Corolla.
Up there in the sky you see some lenticular clouds forming due to the wind. It’s kind of windy out
here today. Off in the distance are snow-covered mountains. Those are the Sierra Nevada.
This is looking up Mazourka Canyon basically northward into the Inyo Mountains.
Okay, we are checking out this abandoned mine!
I have got a new setup here that I need to tell you about. I am filming this with my iPhone,
and I’ll be editing the footage on my iPhone using a pretty good app that I found. You’ll
have to let me know if the video quality is much better than my old camera that i had been using
for about the last six or seven years. That camera had so much dust inside of it that
it was degrading the picture somewhat and washing out the colors. Right now I’ve got this set on 4K
at 30 frames per second or something like that. You’ll have to let me know
in the comments if you see an improvement in the overall video quality and clarity.
Anyway, lots of graffiti here! “Low ceiling.” I think that says — I’m not sure what that one says.
And “I told you so.” Yes, that is a low clearance right there, a low ceiling.
This says, “Stop” and “Go back.”
Well, we're going to go forward!
The timbers run out right here,
and then we just have the tunnel itself with no supports. Here is looking back at the entrance —
the timbered entryway — into this abandoned mine. Let’s keep going!
The research I did on this mine says that this main haulage tunnel goes in
for about 2000 feet (0.61 km) and there are some branching tunnels as well as
a flooded vertical shaft with ladders still in it. So let's check it out!
There’s looking back to the portal, and check out what's here in the ceiling. Someone drew that.
That is pretty impressive!
But we're going to continue
down the main haulage tunnel that way.
Approaching another short, timbered section. You might be asking yourself
why they timbered here but not further ahead or not through the section we just came through.
Well, they only timbered like this in areas that were prone to collapse.
See back here how the overhead or the ceiling (what the miners would call the “back”) is very
solid rock, but in this section right here for some reason you can see up there how it's
fractured. There is a void up there that’s maybe three feet tall (0.91 m), so this was just an area
that was prone to collapse. You can see on the ground here all the dirt that has come down right
here. See it next to the wooden posts? But there's none of that back in the rest of the tunnel. While
it's cool to see this timbering like we're seeing right here, that also means you're passing through
an area that is kind of dangerous and prone to collapse. Somebody wrote right here “Point Of
No Return.” Let’s keep going!
Here is an intersection. The main tunnel continues straight ahead,
and we have a passageway here to the left and some more timbering there. See all the collapsed rock
where my light is under that timbered section? That’s why they timbered that.
Over here I believe is the flooded vertical shaft.
I was talking to another explorer named Jeff. He is from the OTG Exploring channel. That’s
OTG Exploring. There will be a little slide-out card that should appear in the upper right-hand
corner of your screen with a link to his YouTube channel. He’s been exploring abandoned mines
not for too long — about a year — and he's got some great videos. He was already in this mine,
and he's going to come back so he can drop a GoPro on a rope down into this flooded vertical shaft.
Yes, these are really dangerous. Let me get over here around this post. You can see down in here
the shaft. Check that out! That water is crystal clear!
Here are the supports for the shaft. You can see right here the wooden collar.
It has kind of eroded away right here. There is a gap. This was probably filled up with dirt at
one point, but it has collapsed and fallen in there which exposed the collar which you can
also see over here. Well, not really. It has either fallen away or never had one. You can
see the collar over there where my light is on the far side. I’m going to step back over here.
See that trap door right there? See the hinges? The miners would have pulled
that open to access the shaft, and there would have been a hoisting mechanism up there called
a sheave wheel. It looks like a big gear. It would have had cable on it,
and that would have pulled up the cart from this vertical shaft.
We don't know how deep this goes. It probably went down a long way based on
the waste rock pile that's outside this mine. Yes, that's the flooded vertical
shaft. Over there where my light is you can see those metal hooks. That’s how they kept
the whole thing held together with tension, I guess. Those metal hooks would go down
and all the way up, and they would sort of keep the wooden supports nice and tight.
I tried to get a shot from the other side but the trap door there is in the way and
I really couldn't see anything from over there. That’s about the best shot I’m going to get.
I’m really afraid I’m going to drop my phone. I am used to using my video camera.
There's one final shot looking down there. That’s pretty cool!
So there's the flooded vertical shaft we were just at. Looking behind me you can see the entrance.
We are 100 feet in (30.4 m) or maybe a couple hundred feet. We are going to continue
down the main tunnel this way. There is a branch right there going off to the left,
but we'll take that on the way back. I like to take the main haulage tunnel all the way
to its end and bypass any branching tunnels. I then take the branches on the way back out.
I don't know if you can tell in the video but my voice kind of got muffled here because I’m in this
timbered section and the rock here made my voice get muffled. That means it's kind of unstable,
and you can see how it's all falling down here. That’s why they timbered here as you can tell by
my voice. I bet when I get out of here my voice will have some reverberation to it.
Let’s see if that's the case! So we're passing out of the timbered section with the dangerous
rock and, yes, you can hear the difference in my voice. It has more of an echo here, so
that's why they timbered there and probably the same thing here with this little section.
You can see all the debris up there that' has come down, and that's all being held up
by these wooden beams that still look to be in pretty good condition for as old as they are.
This was probably worked in the 1950s, I think. I’m not sure. That’s just a dead-end.
Same thing over here — a dead-end. Let’s keep going down the main tunnel!
Continuing down the tunnel, do you see these wires right here? There are some wires right
there. There are some right here. Look at what's on this wire! I believe it’s a bat.
A little bat is sleeping. It’s hanging from that wire
that is coming down from that wedge right there. Look at that! It's a little
sleeping bat hanging upside down. Let me get on the other side and look at that.
His or her fur looks pretty healthy. Sometimes when you see these bats,
their fur is kind of gross, missing in places, and looks kind of mottled.
This one, however, looks pretty healthy. Look at that. It’s sleeping. Let's get real close.
His face would be down there, but I’m kind of at the wrong angle. That is who
lives in these mines — bats, rats, mice, an occasional snake, and rarely a mountain lion.
Those are pretty much the only things you're going to encounter.
It’s still a straight shot. Here’s looking back at the portal.
Let’s keep going! Okay, do you hear how my voice is echoing in here? So this is really stable. You
can see on the ground the indentations where the cross-ties — the wooden cross-ties — would
have been for the ore cart tracks that would have been in here for the ore carts or the mine carts.
These wooden wedges you see sticking out all along here were used to probably hang up the
ventilation tubing or to string up electrical lights or water lines or air lines. Who knows?
But that's what those were for. You see them all along here. They go all the way down there.
Right here the tunnel got really humid. That's because we're probably getting close to the end.
Keep in mind that flooded vertical shaft we saw earlier means there are flooded lower levels.
So some of that humidity may be coming from there. There might be
an opening up here that looks down into a flooded area, and that's why it suddenly got
humid in here. It could also be from water seeping from above in the tunnel ceiling.
When it gets humid like this, it's a little cause for alarm. But that's why we carry oxygen meters.
When the wooden timbers get wet or damp, they degrade over time and can release carbon dioxide.
They also eat up the oxygen, too. Up ahead is a timbered section that's all collapsed.
These timbers are probably damp and rotten. See them right here?
Yes, look at that. That’s why it's kind of moist in here.
This continues onward. Did you notice how my voice got kind of muffled in here because
of this area of unstable rock? That just keeps going. I don't know. I'm probably in
maybe a thousand feet (304 m). The tunnel goes for another thousand feet or so and just stops.
So I’m not going to go down there. But we can go back and take the branching tunnel
that's up here off to the right. So let's go check it out!
As I’m making my way back out, I noticed above me something I missed on the way in. Check this out!
There is a colony of bats! That’s as far as I can zoom in, but you can see them up there.
That's pretty cool. There is a cluster of them,
and some are even flying. That one is crawling down! See how they crawl?
It looks like we have to cross a makeshift bridge. Check this out.
That’s a bridge over a pit.
Well, I reached a question mark. I’ve got a branch to the left and a smaller one
to the right. …at the end of the tunnel on the face —oops! I’ve got a bat flying here!
Well, it does dead-end right there but it goes to the right.
We just came from that way