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This is actually not our first visit to this abandoned gold mine, but this is our first visit to THIS part of the mine. We couldn’t shake the feeling that we had missed something on our first exploring visit… So, after a couple of years, we returned to this abandoned mine high up in the mountains to take a second look at it. We found more surface workings where the miners had carved out trenches surrounding quartz veins and we observed that some of the surface workings we had seen before were looking much more eroded and precarious despite the relatively short passage of time (abandoned mines tend to have a short shelf life). Of much more significance though, while assessing what we thought was a simple ore pass to a caved adit below, we discovered something quite unexpected, which is the subject of this video…
There was some confusion on our part as to whether what we found was a simple ore pass or a shaft. So, you’ll hear us refer to it as both. It was open to the surface and dropped down through various drift levels like a shaft. However, they also dumped ore down from surface workings at the top - like an ore pass - in order for it to be processed in the mill below. Sometimes these things are difficult to classify. So, what do you think it should be called?
I apologize for the footage that is less stable than that to which you are accustomed, but you’ll recall the formula I have shared before: The more remote and harder a mine is to reach, the less gear I will be taking with me. I didn’t even have extra camera batteries for this one. Just my helmet, my handheld flashlight, gloves and my camera. That’s it. Yes, this is a remote mine.
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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so adjust those settings to ramp up the quality! It really does make a difference…
You can click here for the full playlist of abandoned mines: 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 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!
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