Okay, I'm standing at the bottom of the tailings for the Victorine Mine. This is looking straight
up the mountainside at all these tailings, and the Victorine Mine is up there on top
of the ridge. You can't see it from down here, obviously, and the Horton Mine is over here to
the right. That's where I'm headed. Here is a real quick shot looking around at the canyon. Pretty
spectacular scenery up here! Okay, the Horton Mine still has some water coming out of it. You
can see it pooled up here outside, and here's the portal. So let's go check this out and see if it's
any drier than it was a year ago when I was last here. Okay, I'm just a few feet farther inside
the portal. You can see the yellow ventilation tubing that's still suspended from the overhead.
There is a shot looking down the tunnel -- a very dark, foreboding tunnel, that's for sure!
Okay, you can see here in the overhead that the fencing they put up to hold back the rock is
really rusted and corroded, and it's even broken in some spots like right here. Some of the metal
strapping right over there has also come out, so this tunnel is very sketchy. It still has a very,
very creepy vibe, but we'll keep going forward and see what we can find out about this tunnel.
Okay, I just crossed over to where I thought the tunnel was drier. Do you see my footprint
there? I sank in! That is probably four inches or five inches in the mud here!
I'll see how far I can get in this tunnel. It's still pretty wet and pretty muddy,
and this is how far I've come. There is the portal.
I'm further in than I was a year ago. That's how far I've come in this tunnel. I did some research
on this mine a few months ago. This tunnel was dug in the late 1970s or early 1980s and was
used as a conveyor tunnel to get the ore out from the Victorine Mine that's located about
900 feet higher (274 m) on the mountain. When I was up there at the Victorine Mine a year ago,
I noticed that there was a bore hole that they had drilled, and I believe that is the ore pass
that connects up with this tunnel. They dug that ore pass so they could dump the ore in it and
then take it down this tunnel to the outside. So this tunnel was simply a transport tunnel,
and I heard it goes back 600 feet (182 m). If I make it all the way to the back,
we should be able to see the shaft coming down from above. It will be
a 900 foot shaft (274 m) going up to the surface at the Victorine Mine.
The tunnel continues forward there, and I've reached the first little alcove here off to the
left. Right here is a little dugout area, and you can hear what sounds like a lot of water dropping
or falling into the tunnel down there. I don't know if the video is picking that up or not.
Right here in the tunnel the water is a little bit deeper and it seems like underneath the surface
there's a hard substance. It must be some sort of mineral build-up. You can see it there around
that rock. It's like a mineral build-up, and that just continues. The water is flowing -- I
can see it right there -- so it's not stagnant water which can be a problem in abandoned mines.
It's better to have flowing water. There's the portal and all those chains. Okay, we're getting
deeper! Here is some kind of backfilled area on the other side of the tunnel. Here is more
ventilation tubing, and there's a lot of water up here coming in from somewhere!
Well, I believe I've reached the end of the tunnel. I thought was going to be a lot longer
than this because I had read it's 600 feet long (182 m). Here's looking back at the portal.
I don't know if that's 600 feet (182 m) or not. Maybe it's more like 400 feet (122 m). I think
the water is coming down the ore pass -- the vertical shaft -- here at the end of the tunnel,
so let me make my way over there through all this mud and check it out. Right there
is where the water is coming from, and right above that you can see the metal
ore chute that is part of the ore pass coming down there at an angle. That came down right
over here in this horizontal section, and then ore was probably dumped out
into the waiting tram car. Then they would just haul it out of the tunnel
to the portal.
You can see some ladders. They are going up at an angle, and there's one right above the
ore chute right there. I don't know if there was a manway in the ore pass or not. There probably
was and that would probably go up about 800 or 900 feet to the opening that's outside the Victorine
Mine. And right here is the end of the ore pass. You can see a grizzly in there which is the bars
that would hold back the rocks that were too big to fit through while the smaller rocks
tumbled through into the ore cat that would be waiting right here. Then they would drive
it right out of the tunnel. They were motorized cars that resembled a modified dump truck. I am
not going to climb up those ladders and check all that out. It's too wet and too rusted.
Okay, here's a final parting shot of the end
of the Horton tunnel. There's the ore pass with all the cascading water and
I don't know what that was, but there was a sudden blast of cold air! I'm getting out of here!