Three videos are usually more than enough to explore and document an entire abandoned mine. However, in this case, we’re just wrapping up a single level of this huge tungsten mine after three videos! And there are MANY more levels here, cascading down the mountain. It is truly no exaggeration to say that one could spend weeks here and still not see it all.
This is certainly a strange mine... Despite visiting hundreds of mines now - both active and abandoned - there were things in this mine that I have never seen anywhere else. And I’m not just referring to the military experiments for the ICBM Deep Basing project or to the giant boreholes.
I have to say that those giant boreholes dropping down to the depths of the mine creep me out a little when I think about them. Those holes were hardly marked and one looking ahead of them rather than down could fairly easily plunge into one. And imagine what that would be like… No, I’m afraid you don’t get an easy death on that one. The water was almost certainly no more than 150 feet down. You know what that means? It means that the fall would not kill you. Slipping in, you’d be desperately grabbing at the smooth sides to try to arrest your fall, but that would be completely futile. Your lights would be bouncing around you, adding to the chaos, and, possibly, giving you a fleeting glimpse of the location of your death. The shock of crashing into the freezing, black mine water would feel like getting kicked in the chest. However, the will to live is strong and one would fight their way back up to the surface of the water, gasping for breath and trying to orient themselves in the absolute blackness. Oh, you thought you’d be able to see? If you didn’t drop your lights during the fall, the impact and the water would have extinguished them. You’re thrashing about, frantically grabbing at the smooth sides to try and find something - ANYTHING!! - to grab onto. But, of course, there is no salvation offered by those flawless, smooth surfaces... In the total darkness, you would have no sense of the passage of time. Gasping for breath as you tread water to keep from slipping under, heart hammering in your chest from fear and exertion, muscles burning - have I been here for minutes or hours? Time doesn’t matter because, deep down, you know that help will not possibly arrive in time to save you. Waves of panic would lead to surges of activity, kicking against the water and lunging at the smooth sides to try and grasp something to relieve the exhaustion of trying to stay afloat. There is nothing. Relentlessly, unceasingly, the cold water bleeds away your strength and cruelly erodes your will to keep fighting. Thoughts of those you love, and all that you have to live for, would race through your mind like autumn leaves in a whirlwind. The efforts to keep your face above the water weaken. Eventually, after what would seem an eternity, your head would slip beneath the black water, never to draw a breath in the world of the living again. The last thing you would feel is the icy, black water clawing at your lungs as your head exploded with fiery pain.
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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so I’d encourage you to adjust your settings to the highest quality if it is not done automatically.
You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD
As well as a small gear update here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6
You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9L
Thanks for watching!
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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. But, you know what? We enjoy doing it! This is exploring history firsthand - bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a century, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind... These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born.
So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
#ExploringAbandonedMines
#MineExploring
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26 май 2020
