Wild, Wild Horses Couldn't Keep Us Away (From This Abandoned Mine)

This is the closest I have been to wild horses out in the Nevada deserts. Normally, they keep a much greater distance from humans. So, I suppose, it seems we couldn’t drag them away from that tiny watering hole… In my experience, it is much more common to encounter burros and, while they are a bit standoffish as well, one can normally get closer to them.

My apologies to fans of the Rolling Stones for cribbing the title of their classic song for this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQTHB4jM-KQ

On to the abandoned mine… The earliest records I could locate on this mine are from the early 1900s. However, those same records reference earlier work at the site. So, the history is somewhat obscure, but, suffice it to say, the majority of work appears to have been done in the early 1900s. This was primarily a gold mine, but silver was mined here as well.

I’m pretty certain that that winze dropping off from the strange pit tied into a small shaft that was near the portal to this mine. That would explain the air flow and the proximity makes sense… Unfortunately, there really wasn’t anything to anchor to in that space for us to rope down it. Often, that really is the only thing preventing us from dropping a shaft or a winze. I don’t have the gear to install rock bolts and I wouldn’t really be into that anyway.

I know it isn’t related to mining, but I was fascinated by that watering hole the horses were using. That’s a particularly dry stretch of desert and there is nothing to indicate that there is any water – or possible source of water – for many miles around. It has, obviously, been there for a while based on the number of trails and the number of horse skeletons we found in the immediate vicinity. The spot was so heavily trafficked that no vegetation at all has been able to gain a foothold at the spot where the water is seeping out. The horses were trying to dig out the earth with their hooves to create a deeper well to draw the water from. I wonder if it would help them to dig that open a bit to create a deeper hole or if the water would simply evaporate away more easily or fill in with dirt almost immediately? I also wonder how long that has been there and if the miners relied on it as well? I would think that would have been a big advantage to not have to haul in heavy loads of water all of the time…

*****

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: https://bit.ly/2wqcBDD

As well as a small gear update here: https://bit.ly/2p6Jip6

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

Thanks for watching!

*****

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
#AbandonedMines
#UndergroundMineExploring

Видео Wild, Wild Horses Couldn't Keep Us Away (From This Abandoned Mine) канала TVR Exploring