I am doing a little night exploration, and here is the entrance
to an abandoned mine. It's a partially collapsed entrance. Right here you can see some boulders
have come down from the hillside, but you can still get in on this side.
So let's go in here and check this mine out! You have to sit down and slide into this one.
So we just came in there, and you can see right here is the original entrance. They
had a wooden portico -- a pretty wide one, and that's what the collapse covered up.
That is a pretty substantial portico! There are a lot of heavy timbers there on top. See that?
There is a crossbeam -- actually two crossbeams -- and then these other timbers that were placed
perpendicular. Those are really thick! That's almost three inches thick. This certainly is a big
entrance and a big tunnel. You can see here that it continues this way, so let's go check it out!
I was actually in this mine about 10 or 11 years ago. The person I was with and I came in
here. I can't remember how far we came in. It wasn't that far.
I think we passed this little intersection here where there's an alcove. The tunnel keeps going
straight here. It starts to go downhill here. I remember we came down in here,
but we turned around because we really hadn't planned on coming in here. We thought we would
check it out briefly. Actually, I don't think this tunnel is marked on the map, so when we came
up here we kind of found it by accident. We didn't have our gear with us if I can remember correctly,
so that's why we didn't explore it. We only came in 100 feet or so and then said we'd come back but
never did. So it's kind of unusual to have a main haulage tunnel like this one coming
down on an incline which starts right back up there. This one does, though.
Here's a little...
That goes somewhere, but we'll keep going down the main haulage tunnel. Downward!
Well, I've come down here to the first bend. The tunnel continues this way to the left
and then right here.... Oh! I thought this was a dead end. It's not!
There's a branch that goes that way, too. I see timbering down there, so that's probably
the main tunnel. We just came from that way from up there, and this over here might be a dead end.
I do know that this mine is rather extensive,
and onsite there is a vertical shaft. I can't remember how deep it goes. I want to say 600 feet,
so there are probably a lot of workings here on different levels.
Right here...
This might be...
There's a wall here and it
looks like some stoping is going on.
Let's go back and take that branch with the timbers in it. That is probably the main tunnel.
Back here at the first junction are some interesting rock colors. There is kind
of a gray colored pocket there surrounded by what looks like sulfur with a yellowish color,
and that's surrounded by a darker brown or almost black color. See that?
Okay, so we're going to head this way to what I think is the main tunnel.
Here's another intersection. To the left is kind of a dead end, and then to the right is
kind of a dead end, too.
Yes, it doesn't go anywhere.
So here's more of that yellow color surrounded by the black
color. There is also a little bit of gray in the center of that yellow just like there was at the
main intersection. There's some gray right there.
We'll continue this way. There are some timbers here.
Well, I came back over to the other side to that other branch,
and I'm going to climb up into these stopes and see where these go.
You can see some support timbers up there where my light is.
Hopefully we'll get to more tunnels. These stopes are cool but they are
not the most exciting thing to explore. Let me get underneath this arch.
There's a retaining wall. I don't know what's behind that. Maybe we can see up here to the left.
No, it doesn't go through.
Alright, check that out! There are some ore cart tracks in there on an incline.
There is a vertical shaft on this site but that doesn't mean it couldn't turn
inclined further down from the top. This might be that shaft!
Okay, I just came down through that little opening into this inclined shaft.
Here's looking up the shaft. You can see the tracks going up there. It looks like there's
another drift level right there where my light is, and then probably another one further up. Here at
the bottom it looks like it bottoms out right about here. A big timber here. I don't think it
goes any further. I can see the bottom down there, and I think that's just where we were maybe.
Let's go down there and check that out real quick!
Here's some stoping above the inclined shaft. They left this arch of rock here.
That's probably an old survey tag right there. The inclined shaft comes down here,
and that's where we were earlier. Oh, I know where we are! There is that wooden wall,
so we were just on the other side of that.
There are the tracks from the inclined shaft. They bottom out here.
We are just in a big stope here. It's not a big stope. For those that don't know,
a stope is a large chamber underground like this one that remains after the miners remove
all the ore that they're mining. These chambers and voids are called stopes.
Some can be as huge as four, five, or six houses and bigger while some can be small like this one.
The tracks here come down. There is a ladder here.
Well, that goes somewhere.
Probably down to lower levels.
I don't know how you get down there because there's only one ladder.
There isn't another ladder below that. Oh, there is another
ladder! But, yes, that looks pretty sketchy. That's probably pretty deep. They have the
air pipe and the water lines going down there for the drills and stuff, so there are probably major
workings below us. Like I said, I think it's a 600 foot vertical shaft. 600 feet deep! But
we'll keep going this way. This is where the tracks for the inclined shaft are taking us.
This mine has got branches going every which way -- up and down!
You could get lost in this one, I think, but I remember. I know where we're at. There's that
inclined shaft, and we head up to the right. So I just came from that way via the inclined shaft.
This here is just a void that's kind of a mini stope. Over there is more stoping, and it looks
like the main tunnel goes this way. There is a ladder laying down there, and these pipes
here were for the air and water for the drills. Those go that way, so let's follow the pipes.
Okay, here's that ladder -- a broken ladder. The pipes are going around here to the right.
Oh! There are a lot of timbers here!
Well, here's another shaft. It looks vertical, and the pipes
make a left here and go into the shaft. Yes, I think I feel some airflow.
Well, this was a vertical shaft. You can see ladders in there,
but they threw a bunch of debris down in from the top probably in an attempt to plug the shaft.
Let me turn the camera upward and see if we can see up to the top.
Okay, let's see. Let me get the lights right.
It just keeps going up! Look at that!
So, yes, it's one of the vertical shafts here. Who knows how far down it goes.
We can't access it anyway. Even right there you can see a gap but there's too much debris.
See that large item behind the ladder? See where my light is? Let me turn my light down.
Behind the ladder you see what looks like a barrel or a tube.
That is probably ventilation tubing, I bet. Good-sized ventilation tubing!
Okay, I need to back out of here. This is a dead end basically.
Well, it's not a dead end but this is where the shaft is and we can't go any further.
There's a better shot of that ventilation tubing
right there behind that ladder. It's corrugated, so
I don't think that's a barrel. Let's toss a rock down there and see if we can hear how far it goes.
I don't know -- I'm sure it's deep.
It's just a mess of ladders and timbers.
So apparently they hoisted stuff up there. I don't know if there was a drop-off point here
so the inclined shaft could take the ore out, or if they went straight to the top
of the vertical shaft. It's kind of strange that there's an inclined
shaft that bottoms out right here at a vertical shaft. I don't know.
Look on that timber up there! Somebody -- one of the miners -- wrote the word "powder."
Let me zoom in there to that.
Powder.
Look at that!
It's all rusted, but that's still an ore cart!
I just came up through that little opening, came up into this stope chamber,
and found this wooden retaining wall. I think we saw this on the way in, though. I'm getting
turned around in here. I just tossed a rock onto those boards to see how
sturdy they were, and they moved and made that gap. The boards are actually cracked
in the middle almost all the way across. Both of them! See that? There is a crack,
so if those would break you'd slip right down through there and down into that hole.