Into A Very Dangerous Underground Placer Gold Mine

I’m reminded of that old British joke in saying that this may not be the most dangerous abandoned mine that I have ever explored, but it is in the top 1… Sure, I have been in some other sporty mines that had issues with bad air or concerns about sections of the mine itself caving, but never both at the same time before. I wasn’t kidding that the underground placer gold mines can be dangerous. These mines have a lot of risks that are not present in other types of mines.

I often get questions and comments about the underground placer gold mines in California and a lot of people misunderstand them. The “placer” material here is made up of the compressed remains of ancient river channels that used to run through where the Sierra Nevada mountains of California are now. Just as modern creeks and rivers in “gold country” fill up with gold over time, these ancient rivers did as well. However, there were no miners around back then to pick the gold out of them. Over time, volcanic eruptions and other geologic activity buried these ancient rivers and shifted them around. Now, one can find the remains of these ancient river channels at the top of a mountain. And, of course, even there they still contain the gold that tumbled down into them so many countless millions of years ago. So, gold miners eagerly tunneled in after them. No one knows which individual first discovered that there were ancient rivers of gold hidden underground in California, but it must have blown their mind to make a discovery like that!

Composed as they are of only sand, gravel and round river rock that is simply squeezed together, these placer deposits do not hold up well after a space has opened up within them (such as when a tunnel is run through). You can see that for yourself in this mine as the first part of the mine that punched through the hard rock was free from caved material. However, as soon as I hit the zone where the placer material started, it was just collapsed section after collapsed section without any interruption. Dangerous stuff…

In Alaska, the miners I know work the underground placer gold mines in the winter when they can vent freezing air underground. This keeps the ground frozen and, therefore solid enough, for them to work with safely. However, in the spring, when the ground thaws, all of that space they opened up fills in with caved placer material. To be clear, in Alaska, the placer gold mines are along contemporary river channels, unlike the ancient river channels buried under layers of rock in California.

This mine isn’t a 10 on the sketch scale because I believe a 10 is essentially that you die as soon as you go in from bad air or something like that. However, this mine was pretty sporty. So, I’d say it is up there at an 8 or so.

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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!

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Видео Into A Very Dangerous Underground Placer Gold Mine канала TVR Exploring