#23 The MASSIVE EXPLOSION at the Mother Lode Mine

hey everyone we got a really exciting show for you today I guarantee you're going to have a blast so we're heading to the motherload mine and the motherload mine is really cool because they had the probably the largest blast I'm sure the largest blast in a mine they ever had in this whole area um they worked this mine for years with these tunnels and stopes and uh they decided that they were just uh they were get tired of blasting a little bit of a time and cleaning it out and Mining it and they decided they were going to drill a monster uh they drilled 4200 holes and they put 25 tons of explosives in these holes um 25 tons is like this box here that's a 50 50 lb box of explosives th000 boxes this size they filled up in this big in this uh in this big blast they were doing and uh they they lit the fuse and uh basically they wrecked the mine now there's so much overburden that came down diluted the copper so much that uh they never made much money at the mine so they it's continued to operate for a few more years anyhow so it's a really cool mine there's a big a great big open pit that's where this blast was and uh we uh they supposed to been all sealed off but we found a way to get down to the 200 level and there's water below that it went down to 500 ft below that um so anyways so we're here to talk about explosives and this here is a rail drill and this is what they drill the holes into they do blasting with inside the mine this is mounted somewhere solid this thing's pretty heavy we about I don't know 150 200 lb Mount that in solid put the bit in there and then you crank this as your drill and then it goes the drill goes in and that's the way then you pull it out put a longer one in and uh and that's how you how how you drill the face and then they they put it up there now I told you before um this here was a um a blasting cap and I found out no it isn't a blasting cap what this is actually it's a replaceable end for a drill um they they weld it on end of drill steel and the hole is not for a fuse it's actually for water to come up there so that is not a blasting cap but we have been able we were able to locate a blasting cap and we're going to show you how this works um now I only have one of these and I'm not going to tell you where it came from and it won't be here much longer but basically so this is the old stuff that they used that they used to um to uh to blow dynamite and stuff up before they started using electricity electricity became common because then they could time the charges so you would U you would time you would put a drill a bunch of holes time the charges and then it would be like a wave that the explosions would be like a wave they they light it and it would and it was far more effective than just a big bang this uh you know you could only stick it in one stick right or a group of of dynamite and then it would just blow up that one and it wasn't timed you can light a bunch but you know so it wasn't very sophisticated so this was kind of the old older style the big advantage to this is you can use this underwater there's nothing here I'll show you there's nothing you can do to put this guy out I'm not going to try to put it out but um so basically the way it works you just take the end off of here and then uh and then you light it and way it goes so so now the advantage to this is it's um there's nothing you don't really see nothing you don't even see where it is it just burns inside here and it's uh it's very precise it takes exactly 3 minutes going to be pretty Smokey in here I got 3 minutes I know before it goes off and don't worry I'll throw it outside before it goes off but see it starts to burn down and there's nothing you can do to put this thing out other than just cutting it or you can pull it out of the stick of dynamite so it doesn't go off until it goes to the very end so um we're we're really going to stink up the shop here so we're just going to throw this outside and then we'll film the blastic cap and it goes off it's just like a big firecracker basically so as you can see the smoke is getting closer to the end there probably got about 30 seconds left and it'll go off 3 minutes seems like a long time when you're waiting for something to blow up so real close to it it's not really very uh very G hazardous this does puts pressure and stuff on the dynamite and that's what set [Music] [Applause] [Music] well through the darkness that's blood in the air the angel of death the singing the [Music] St the madness sadness kisses cover your ass as you stay on the [Music] run all this time it's time to The Joker Is Wild and he's stacking the [Music] de down go around the down in Hell stay on the mo [Music] you hey we're here at the motherload mine as you can see it's a pretty large uh pit here there's actually a pretty much a town here a railway came here and it was a pretty profitable mine and we've got an awesome mine here to explore um there's all the remains of the of the concentrator compressors and all that kind of stuff the foundations of it and uh we got quite a bit of stuff to explore all right just quick a few little Clips we're flying over that mother little mine here this is actually the tailings pond here as we're coming up the mine here we're following the mine and the mine is that great big uh pit and from the floor of the pit the mine went down another 500 ft but uh you can only get down 200 ft so there's a guy there he's got a little scrapyard there he lives right beside it but um he's got no problem with the being there it's Crown Land so back over the pit there and we're heading back towards the tailing pawn and I'll make another pass or two real quick there it's hard to get good shot when you're flying over 100 miles hour if you fly too high you can't see nothing if you fly too low you're going too fast so need a helicopter there's the pit again and uh we're coming back around to the tailings pond here and uh one more little shot over the pit here it's a pretty big hole uh it's not a good time of day to fly over it cuz it's big Shadow there but uh gives you kind of a rough idea just how big it is it's pretty fair size hole so now we're coming over to Greenwood here we're just going over the this is where the Greenwood smelter is actually where all this material went just uh about 5 miles to the South there and there's called Hell's Bells are huge bells on top of their castings of slag there and you see the great big uh stack there that you see when you going Greenwood there there's the stack right there so we're looking at just all kinds of different type of rock you know some of it's pretty mineralized other that looks like more like a Kel sites here and like I said I'm not no geologist or nothing and but uh just kind of show you some of the some of the different formations here heard some sulfides there and you see there's big Shear there we can see some probably pyrates I guess eh kind of a pretty goldish colored material usually you know Pirates are kind of associated with this type Rock there you can see this was definitely Blossom you can see the drill hole there lots of different levels and we're making our way up the pit up to this one added here we're going to go inside and have a look but yeah pretty big open pit you can see our our vehicle way down that's the way we came and per B of loose Rock here obviously there's some some hazards associated with rock falling on you wonder if that's some kind of a fossil interesting pattern there we've walked around the very bottom of the pit here so um there doesn't seem to be any ads that we can find at the top so it looks like there's a few holes at the bottom we can check out there's one there and another one at the end there so we'll have a look at those but as far as the the open pit portion here there's no addice that we could see anywhere around this side here's another shot of the pit there you can just see all this pretty colorful material here lots of uh lots of pyrates in there looks like gold but obviously it isn't otherwise maybe mining it well that's uh interesting I don't know what what it is kind of a a gate it almost looks like haven't seen that [Applause] before they blocked this uh added off but it wasn't too much of a problem to cwl under it so uh there's a an Oro here look at the size of the Timber on Theo here's another part of that kind of interesting thing we seen that looks like a real old rail car to me an old mine car kind of a hook may there's an ox two little big metal rings there so sticking with her right hand tradition yeah lots of branches in here right so all right so some of these seem to be kind of blocked off big or shoot there e our LED light on our camera all right so a fair bit of air com up through here so there's a raise see where all this air is coming from was coming from down there but could be wrong huh no not coming from down there coming from up here I don't think we're going to get very far up there unfortunately continue on down the main branch and see what we can find might not have uh too much to explore here you never know till you go quite a few different branches here though let's go this way max if we're going to be able to find our way through here very far it's a pretty consistent colored Rock here you sort of I S Pen tonight sort of mixed in with some copper in here oh there's a raise there just massive war shoots in here look how skook that is not looking very promising here though looks like it's pretty much all caved in yeah and they didn't do a whole bunch of damage to those stopes they probably would have continued mining this but uh since they shut it out I think maybe they just wrecked everything which might be like too bad for us so it really looks like the story was here man's greed's got the better of them had a nice little mine here he screwed it up okay so yeah here's another collapsed or shoot and here is the last collapsed Oro so yeah looks like they just basically wrecked this whole mine unfortunately so there's nothing for us to explore I have no idea why they would have gone through all the trouble to put a big fence in there I mean there's nothing really in here to dangerous or anything so that's what's at the mother Lord mine that we could find so far those look like a bunch of uh a tamping sticks some for tamping Dynamite Just I'm really impressed by these uh Loadout shoots I've never seen load out shoots that were built that scook them awesome did a heck of a job on them those stoed out areas must have been really cool yeah so if you're curious as to what's in behind uh this gated off area let me just tell you hardly worth the effort of grow under it as you can see from the underground uh so they had all these uh tunnels and they were following these or uh veins that were pretty rich and you can see maybe that one goes in a little bit further and there's one a little higher there all these stoed out areas have all collapsed and we haven't found any place where we can actually get anywhere here's another shot of some of this mineralization along the edge of the pit so as you can see you very bit of copper in there e you know obviously not enough uh to be worth mining but uh looks good to me but what do I know right so the main shaft goes straight down 500 ft and I've heard from uh somebody that uh it was actually cemented off so we're going to see if we can find that so this is certainly going to be interesting this is something that we're going to need our rope gear for and we can head straight down there and check this out so our adventure is kind of begun here we have all our gear on we're heading down this shaft so uh my light fell off and it fell down that hole not really too much of a problem because obviously I have a backup lights and lights of my camera so we're going to continue on down this shaft all right so we were able to climb down this first part of this you know it's not really Treach say that first part was pretty steep but you know nothing really nasty but it's all good e cuz it's giv us a chance to uh to use our safety gear and and practice this SRT stuff but uh I don't think we really need it from this point down it doesn't look really be that steep so we're just going to unhook there and we have uh you know three different different ways we can go here so looks like a big stoped area like I said this uh this mine went down to the 500 level so it goes down a long ways and uh this is going to be some of the Real historic motherload stuff that not many people ever get to see so that's a challenge you always have when you get under these things to try to light them so this was really a big mine I mean this this mine fed the the smelter of Greenwood for most of the time that it was operating wow Who would thought that little hole you know they just barely squeeze through would allow you get into this big huge area here huh we've certainly found the keys to the to the mine [Applause] here just get to walk along here and show you some of the stuff here there's a drill stuck in there not really that difficult to get in here I definitely need the you know ropes to get down that first part's pretty steep but you know down in here is really that bad to walk around in here there's some sulfides in here wow that's probably the 200 level so we're probably looking at 300 ft I bet you there's about 300 ft of mine underneath that you know look pretty stable it's not caved in that much oh there's a rope there that rope doesn't look too ancient but it's always hard to tell stuff undergr ground I me it's not exposed to the effects of the Sun and stuff so it just doesn't get uh fairly dry in here you know it's not too bad see where that rope goes huh wow this is just really definitely worthwhile to come in here oh it's just the ropes just hooked to a little anchor I guess people are I can walk up here no problem with camera in my hands more rots down here let's just see it's a loose Rock here but it's not too bad of an angle worse than walking up a a steep slope on the outside yeah same thing yeah it almost seems like in the pit they either the big blast sealed off a bunch of these stopes going down or they just decide to try to block it off yeah not going to get anywhere going up here I'm just surprised how warm it is down here you know some Minds we went in really cold here and a t-shirt just walking around here with plenty of worm you oh there's another level going down yeah that doesn't look too steep I can get up there yeah so it wasn't that difficult climbing down there and I'm sure I can get back up and we're heading into another Stope I guess now at this point just totally confused yeah you know this wasn't a really crazy Rich copper mine it doesn't go down any further because we're going to run into the water so this is just another Stope I think we're just right below the pit here really so this would be the 200 level but uh you that's all that we'll be able to see I don't think there's been a whole pile of people in here prob all this loose Rock got broke off from the big blast Maybe I don't think they M this this area after the big blast and doesn't look like it to me anyways be kind of curious to see if we could find them the main shaft the motherload shaft that I heard was uh was uh canted off whether that's true or not I don't know always confusing being underground there it's easy to lose your [Music] bearings there we are that's that's blocked right off there so Stope has just got one big massive pillar in the very middle holding it all up so when they were talking about wanted to mine some pillars that's what they were talking about they definitely would wanted to grab the ore I kind of felt bad about having to leave that behind but they knew damn well if they uh they did this whole thing just collapsed guys are pretty smart they understood physics and geology pretty interesting the way they've done that it's like just a whole bunch of arches which is pretty strong right you look around the top of this whole thing it's just like a whole bunch of arches had a rope there and it seem to be in really good shape so I thought take advantage of this rope and take a trip down to the down this or on be pretty good shape and where we are 200 level I guess see no railway tracks under there nothing but worry I'm not planning on any cave tub Adventure down [Music] here doesn't look like give be much head room there I wouldn't get very far do way too much work to try to climb down there well this one probably built back around the turn of the century maybe 12 years ago and then used it for a lot of years to put a lot of work down here keep the S GRE happy see we're kind of really Limited as to where we can go because uh water's just blow us so all we can do is move along here laterally there's some interesting material eh do that look like lead and silver that silver pretty shiny looking stuff there you go a little bit more light there so yeah this looks like silver and silver to Me Maybe aluminum ladder that is so aluminum should be safe right there's a rat not going to come bite us is he no looks like he's running away good rat we can pick our way up there there's a ladder going up a a big steep hole just going to make her way up this SU wide slope [Music] here okay not really finding much interesting artifacts here but certainly interesting uh looking mine huh here we are there's a bucket rope on it [Music] there's another little Rod hole that's plugged off there some pretty red looking material here I'm surprised how warm it is in here you know very large area and it's not open to the outside you wonder why it'd be so so warm know it's not like really deep or nothing oh there's a a tamping stck your dynamite oh that's a shovel yeah not daming stick at all a shovel yeah let's have a climb up that aluminum ladder there looks like a good solid ladder H even if a guy did fall down just probably fall into that loose Rock wouldn't be too big of a deal there Alum right yep yep look like a pretty old ladder though it's not like the type you see these days probably better A lot better made than the ones you see these days oh aluminum doesn't Ruster cow so that's always the big advantage to aluminum so I'm not really worried about it didn't even put my camera down oh that's a pretty good not good pretty old ladder [Applause] bet you anything it says polar wonder what they done with the Thousand explosive boxes they used to blast the big hole here huh so it's not pristine condition but yeah kind of wrecking it by picking it up I'm not kind of not kind of reckon it yeah that looks more like a kind of a silver stuff eh see what's down in this hole here air is just stagnant in here not think it's a problem oxygen motor is happy so oh there's our 200 level I suppose she's pretty grany down in there though way think I should take that I don't know how old it would be they didn't knew this just a little raise as they started in the abandoned there's some wedges yeah that's a I'm always looking for things to add to my collections he all right that's pretty black stuff though ehy it's so black some kind of mineral I guesses in here they look crumbling that's arget arget there's a bit of a seam there and I really like the see that shaft be really exciting if we could find motherload shaft we're going to be able to but we'll try may be not connected to the 200 level whatever level we're at so we left our bottle up the top here going to continue down this other or passing I really sure why I really know it we can't go there R in the water here can't help us could doesn't look too steep looks a little oh yeah so there's another block another or shoot anything in there interesting not really yeah just another or shoot there seen quite a few of them in here I'm just kind of have a look at this wall here so we're standing on a ridge between about three passes going down all kinds of directions know this this mine looks really stable under here to me I don't see any kind of any issues that I'd worry about this this a little steak and what they do is they kind of mapping these out and they're doing some prospection or surveying in here tie your hip chain on there yeah you get so turned around it's hard to tell where you've been some sometimes yeah looks like somebody C their lights the last time we were in here I don't think it was any time recently sure looks like my rope in so there's my pack there we go so we just have to climb back up there and we're done yeah so we made her back up to the top there so wasn't a really nasty uh drop down there but uh you know some good SRT practice practice on them single ropes and you know it wasn't straight up and down but um yeah it was really good to have the ropes definitely pretty safe and no issues at all really enjoyed the trip [Music] w [Music]

Channel: Exploring Abandoned Mines

Views: 23,564

Keywords: mine carts, antique, exploring abandoned mines, exploring abandoned mines in bc, frank schlichting, dangerous mines, abandoned mines, bc mines, gold, machines, explore, adventure, gold mining, #gold, gold mine, gold mines, exploring mines, mine shaft, minecraft, mine exploration, abandoned gold mine, abandoned and forgoton places, underground, mining, hard rock mines, climbing, mining equipment, Yankee Boy Mine, Grand Forks, yankee boy mine tour, Mother lode, motherlode, greenwood

Id: CwbgIQs_mLc

Length: 29min 38sec (1778 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2024