Well, here's another mine entrance that we finally made our way to.
Right here at the portal you can see it's on a angle here.
There’s an erosion pile which is very typical and then, because of all the rainfall, there's some
mud down here which you don't usually see out here in the desert. It’s been such a
wet monsoon season everywhere in New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California, and Nevada.
There’s just a lot of water, and you just don't see mud like that in these desert mines. But this
is pretty solid. Nick and Traci are already up there. Nick is Miner49er. I had researched
this mine and apparently this goes in pretty far, is extensive, and connects up with other
openings that are higher on the hillside and pretty much in line with this lowest opening.
So so we're going to check it out. That’s where we're headed.
Here’s looking back at the portal. Back in the day you would have been able to walk straight out
without having to climb up a pile like that. So this is a pretty tall tunnel.
It’s probably about eight or nine feet tall, so that's how much rubble is in the entrance.
Here we are making our way down towards Nick and Traci. If you haven't had a chance to
check out Nick's channel here on YouTube, it's Miner49er. There will be a slide-out card in
the upper right hand corner of the screen if you have that feature enabled that will have a link
to Nick's channel. He’s been exploring mines, and he puts out a video every weekend so
you'll always have something to look forward to every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday!
But I'm glad you're here following along. Look at how the tunnel kind of tilts here.
It doesn't actually tilt, but it looks like it's tilting. I always think that's really
cool! It’s kind of like a fun house effect! This right here is probably a fault line or a contact
zone right there where my light is between the different slabs of rock. I bet they were mining
this light gray stuff probably. So we've arrived at a four-way intersection here. A tunnel there
to the left, straight ahead, and then a tunnel to the right. Looking behind us is the portal. We’ve
decided that we're going to take the main tunnel straight ahead, and then on the way back out
take the branches. See these pieces of metal down here on the ground? These rectangular pieces of
metal are muck plates. I guess when the miners would blast they put that down on the tunnel
floor right at the end of the tunnel where they were blasting. When the blast went off,
the rubble would fall onto the metal plates which made it easier to shovel.
So that's what those are called — muck plates. The debris that they were shoveling was called muck,
and the miners who did that were called muckers. Wow! Look at this! There is a vertical shaft
over there with a crude safety barrier which is just a tree trunk! Look at that! Wow! It looks
like it goes off there to the right as well. We will come back and check that on the way out.
Here’s some kind of a — I don't know what that would have been. Traci thought it was a door. That
may be, so I don't know. I'm not sure what that was or what that would have been used for.
Let us know in the comments. It’s pretty massive! A lot of lumber went into that!
Let’s keep heading down to catch up to Nick and Traci.
Lots of things to explain in these mines, so it takes a little bit of time.
There is something hanging here.
What the heck is hanging up here in the tunnel ceiling? See that white thing?
Oh, it’s a face mask or dust mask. Welcome to the age of Covid, folks!
It looks like that tunnel goes that way but Nick and Traci are this way, so
we'll come back and take this junction. It goes pretty far! We'll take that on the way out.
We came to this vertical shaft going down on a steep incline,
and Nick is crossing it on a big, round timber.
He made it! Now the question is am I going to do it? Probably not.
Nick made it across there to a three-way split, but the tunnels were all dead ends
except for the one to the left. There was a big hole in the floor similar to
what you see right here but no way across it. So there’s nothing really to see back there.
You can see here where my light is that there's a cut. It goes in there. There's a
cut that goes right down into the shaft. so the vein was probably right there. Looking upward
you can see a stope up there. There are some workers’ platforms. There is a pipe
right there where my light is and it goes up into the stope. It’s probably an air or water pipe for
the drills. You can see a false floor up there — a workers’ platform. Those look pretty rotten.
The miners would stand on those platforms and use their drills as they dug out the stope.
We are going to head back and take some of those junctions that are back this way.
So let’s go check it out!
We are back at the “mask junction.” We came in from that way. So here are
what look like survey marks. 184, 183. It looks like that. Those are not indicating feet, I think.
It looks like survey marks.
These tunnels are really wide and tall! It’s nice!
There is a big hole in the floor here. See that stack of rocks there? Nick made that
when he approached this hole from the other side back at that shaft that went down.
So that's where that tunnel comes out to. There is his stack of rocks that he left as a marker.
We don't know how far down that goes, but you can see an ore cart track
sticking out right there.
They probably had a hoist here at one point.
So that goes back to that intersection we were just at.
I’m not sure where that goes. We’ll come back and check that out later.
There is a support timber wedged up in there. It’s somewhat camouflaged against the rocks.
It looks like a rock when you step back away from it.
There is a sharp left hand turn up here.
Look at the ceiling here and how smooth it is!
All the layers.
Traci says the tunnel keeps going.
That’s a dead end. It’s getting a little sketchy here.
Oh gosh! Look at the ceiling here. It’s pretty cool! Yrs, it's pretty jagged.
Well, there’s another hole there in front of Nick!
Nick made it across! This doesn't go down that far. It looks like about — I don't know — 40
feet. It could be plugged, though. The tracks went across here. There are the ore cart tracks.
There’s a lot of debris back there. Nick will go check it out and see where that goes.
Okay, so we're back at the junction here where Nick put that rock stack across this
big shaft in the floor. We just came from that way, and we're going to go down this branch
this way, and back this way are the portal and all the other junctions. So let's head down this way.
Here is some ventilation pipe.
It looks like they
put that together. That’s not welding, I think.
Someone explained what that was once and how they put that together to keep the sections together. I
can't remember, though. If somebody knows, let us know in the comments. That was ventilation piping.
Yes, this mine is really extensive.
That’s why I researched all this. This was one of the bigger mines out here, and
we're finding that to be very true!
Here is kind of a white, gray, and black color scheme. It sounds like my voice
got a little muffled here because of all this soft rock. You can see how it's all come down
so this is not a very stable area.
Yes, it's kind of damp in here. You can see the ceiling. These timbers were….
These timbers that you're seeing here fell down from up there.
Yes, our voices are really muffled here which is a sign that you're going through
a very unstable area prone to collapse that you can see here on the ground.
Yes, you can see there the ceiling that's still standing,
but what we just crossed over used to be above us just like that.
Yes, this is a real unstable area.
That’s
just a little alcove.
I think we've reached the face.
There’s the portal, and here's this other vertical shaft in the floor.
Here’s
looking down this hole. There is an old can down there. Let me zoom in on that.
Okay.
That is as far as I can zoom in. Let’s get some light down there. There is an old can right
there. That probably is the bottom of the shaft but you never know — it could be a plug and it
might have went a lot deeper. It seems like all these vertical shafts are about the same depth,
so that probably is the real bottom. Look at these massive
support timbers here acting as a safety wall. That right there goes down not that
far — about 15 feet or so and stops. I thought it might have come out over here but it doesn't
connect up anywhere. That’s just the beginning of a stope
and then they stopped. So we need to go down that way and catch up with Nick and Traci.
Here are
more muck plates for blasting.
There’s a nice color through here — kind of a reddish-brown
color.
A lot of nice colors through here.
Here’s the face.
There is the portal. Here was the very first junction. Apparently Nick and
Traci said this doesn’t go to far but they said the ceiling was pretty interesting.
Yes, this is a unique color and very striking. Here’s looking up.
Wow! That rock right there looks like a blade! See that? It comes down to a tapered point
almost like a hatchet blade!
So we turn to the left to make our exit.