Bringing An Abandoned Gold Mine Back To Life: Part 15 of ?

It was a long slog to get there, but the core drills are finally spinning at the mine… The purpose of core drilling is to map out the geological structures around us and, more specifically, to locate veins and ore bodies. Despite modern metal detectors, ground penetrating radar, etc. there still isn’t any tool that can do a good, consistent job of tracking down deposits of precious minerals underground. So, the core drilling is still necessary to locate and prove out ore reserves. It isn’t cheap though.

Core drilling is typically done in a fan pattern and the drill is sent out in all directions when performed underground as it is here (surface core drilling, obviously, just runs down, but is also typically done in a fan pattern).

Investors will put some money into a mine to assess its potential, but they’re not going to put big money in unless they know they can get a return on their investment. In order to demonstrate the potential investment return, core drilling is done in order to prove to investors that a certain number of ounces of gold or pounds of copper or whatever are present and where they are located. Then, the mining engineers can figure out the best way to reach and extract those ore bodies, while the geologists can figure out where else such ore bodies might be present in the ground controlled by the mine.

Some viewers have asked when we’re going to start seeing gold at the mine… First of all, visible gold in a lode mine is rare. Most requires some sort of magnifying device to be seen (there are obvious exceptions such as the Sixteen-to-One Mine), but most is embedded in rock in small quantities. That’s why the rock must be crushed and milled to extract the gold.

Secondly, modern mining is very different than the good ol' days of a prospector out with a mule. Today, the expectation for any small-scale mining project is that at least several years and several million dollars will be required to go into production. For a large-scale mining project, that can go into decades and billions of dollars. Yes, there are always exceptions, but those numbers are the industry expectation. At this mine, we're only about two years in and the first year was mostly paperwork and surface work.

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You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: https://goo.gl/TEKq9L

You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: https://bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: https://bit.ly/2p6Jip6
Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.

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.
I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!

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Видео Bringing An Abandoned Gold Mine Back To Life: Part 15 of ? канала TVR Exploring