The brief explanation in the introduction didn’t really do the process of our discovery of this lost gold mine justice... So, for those with longer attention spans that take the time to read the description, here is some more detail for you: This started out as what I would best describe as a “speculative” mine exploring day. We had no specific destination in mind, but wanted to revisit a very old mining district in California that has been kind to us in the past. We weren’t in a rush and were simply venturing down ravines and across old mine workings that we had not explored before. One can actually see a number of interesting things when looking around these historic mining districts - we saw old bottles, bits and pieces of antique mining equipment, the remains of old miner’s cabins…
We stopped for lunch beneath the shade of a thick overhang of trees and brush and, while we were eating, we noticed the remains of a rock wall covered by the brush. Well, naturally, this piqued our curiosity and so when we finished eating, we pushed through the thick brush and discovered that the “rock wall” was actually the support for a trail cut into the side of a cliff rising above us. The interesting thing about this trail is that one literally had to be on it before being able to properly see it and to follow it.
Well, naturally, we started following the trail, which twisted higher and higher up the steep cliffs. We could see that animals had been using the trail, but there was no sign of any recent human activity at all - no modern trash, no branches cut back, no signs of old campfires… Nothing. After a long, sweaty, strenuous climb up, the trail abruptly ended at a landing created out of carefully stacked boulders and leveled out with fine dirt. This landing is completely invisible from the valley below and, in hindsight, is likely the terminus for the tram system employed by the miners. At the time, however, we did not know this.
So, we continued in the general direction that the trail had been trending. After literally crawling through the thick brush, dodging a rattlesnake and struggling to maintain our balance on the steep cliffs for about fifteen minutes, we were about to call it when we happened to spot some quartz through the thick brush. We made our way over to this quartz and discovered that it was fractured and had tumbled down from above. Well, in our experience, fractured rock is often waste rock from a mine. This was enough to send us charging straight up the steep hillside that the quartz had tumbled down and, sure enough, before long, we were slipping and sliding on the loose rock of a massive waste rock pile.
It was an old waste rock pile and so it had trees and brush growing all over it, but it was undoubtedly a waste rock pile. We soon began to additional encouragement from the waste rock pile in the form of old riveted ventilation pipes, pieces of a stamp mill, pieces of rail and countless other bits of unidentifiable metal that had been tossed down it. Scrambling up a rock pile covered in loose leaves and pine needles that is on a step slope is very much a case of 2 steps forward and 1.99 back!
What can I tell you about this mine other than what you saw in this video? Absolutely nothing… It is a phantom that doesn’t exist according to every database and map resource I have examined (and I have been doing this for a while, so I am pretty good at digging things like this up). I went even deeper by asking very knowledgeable local historians and miners that I trust and they all indicated that no mines are in the area where this mine is located. The lost gold mine remains a mystery.
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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.
So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
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1 окт 2024
