Giant Gold Mine Was More Than It Seemed

I was struggling to come up with a video title for our explore of this giant abandoned gold mine. So, I thought of the way that it felt for us to suddenly see those fantastic ore cars and that very promising winze after so long of stumbling through the clay-filled, and mostly artifact-free, halls and galleries above… That area with the ore cars and the winze even had nice, solid rock, which made us optimistic about having finally gotten below the clay layers. Therefore, the mine suddenly had the appearance of offering more than it seemed in the first hours.

That winze cried out to us as well. Very few people are willing or able to get on the ropes and to make their way down such vertical and near-vertical drops underground. So, that naturally filters out most of the looting of such historical sites and is, obviously, why we always have high hopes for the hard-to-reach areas. Having the abandoned mine suddenly take a dramatic turn for the better, right at the top of that somewhat messy (but large) winze certainly made us curious what was down there.

Also, as we considered it a certainty that the main shaft was plugged somewhere below us from all of the infrastructure and debris that had come crashing down it, we thought this winze might offer us a way around the blockage in the main shaft. The stopes had seemed to parallel the main shaft down to the point where the winze was. So, our hope was that we could continue the descent via stopes and possibly other winzes. We considered it to be a pretty safe assumption that very few people had made it to the depths of this mine after it was abandoned.

Oh, and for a point of reference, we came in via the adit on the 100 level and figured that we had gotten down to the 300 or 400 level. If you’ll recall from the video, this mine dropped down for 11 levels (1100 feet). Therefore, there was a considerable amount below us that was still waiting to be explored. Yes, the waste rock and mill tailings outside were enormous!

Thus, filled with optimism about good ground and great artifacts down that winze, we return to run it out as far as we can on our next video of this abandoned mine.

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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 Giant Gold Mine Was More Than It Seemed канала TVR Exploring