This is my favorite kind of abandoned mine to explore… A perfect mine like this feels like a time machine - offering a chance to cross a bridge to a world of the past. You see, the “holy grail” for mine explorers is a mine that is so remote or hidden away that it has not been visited since the last miners walked away. Such a pristine mine offers the potential for myriad artifacts to be present as well a glimpse into how the miners lived and worked at the site. An experience like that is lost at the more easily accessible mines that have been picked over by those hunting souvenirs or, as you’ll recall from the video a couple of weeks ago, destroyed by vandals.
There is also a real feeling of satisfaction in tracking down a mine that is so lonely that no else has visited it. Like a successful treasure hunt, I suppose… It makes it special and personal to you, as one feels when being the first to summit a mountain or, undoubtedly, being the first to do anything. Well, almost anything. As such, I prefer a “special” mine like this one to larger mines that may have far more interesting layouts, but that have been picked over or at least visited by many others.
I spotted this particular abandoned mine on a flyover of the area several years ago and had always wanted to visit. However, doing so took a fair amount of planning and preparation as it is located very, very far off of the beaten track and required more than the average 4WD to even get close enough to hike in. So, it took a while to get out to visit this one.
This is what I would label as a high risk/high reward mine explore. What I mean by this is that I only knew there was a mine here because I had seen the waste rock pile. Other than the fact that this mine was extremely remote and isolated, I knew absolutely nothing else. Was the mine caved? Was it eroded shut? To reach this mine, we drove in for a day to get as close as we could, camped for the night and then hiked the rest of the way in the day after. That is a LOT of time and work for a single mine that could have been inaccessible and had no artifacts. Of course, the reality is that we discovered a wonderful, untouched mine. It could just as well have gone the other way though! That is what I mean by high risk/high reward.
Speaking of remote and isolated - This mine is so far out there in the wild that it is almost inconceivable to me how some grizzled old prospector could have located the site and, further, hauled out the mining equipment and materials to develop it. And, remember, I am saying that with the benefit of modern 4WDs, aircraft and other such luxuries of transportation. The old timers that came out to this mine would have done so on foot or on mules. So many questions… How on earth did they manage to haul the rail in there through that rugged terrain? How did they have enough food and water for themselves, let alone the mules? It was as dry as a bone all through that area.
Unfortunately (tragically?), it does not appear to have been a successful mine. The winze and very minor stoping seemed to be mostly exploratory in nature and the abrupt turns inside of the adit are suggestive of miners searching for a vein rather than miners that are on a vein.
On to less abstract matters…
There are those of you that may be disappointed to not know what is down that winze. Well, rest assured, we are too. However, I believe that rock test indicated the bottom and, most significantly, the presence of the windlass demonstrates that no significant amount of material came out of there. Large or deep workings below would have required much more than a windlass.
A thought on the location of the miner’s camp below… It was fairly windy up at the mine and this wind persisted for the duration of our stay. However, just a few hundred feet below the mine at the miner’s camp, there was no wind at all. I suspect that this may have had a lot to do with the chosen location for the camp.
I would like to say more about all of this, but RU-vid limits the available space we have to write. Some of you are probably relieved by that!
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You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD
And here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6
You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9L
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Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them - nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.
These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever.
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26 сен 2024
