A Mine That'll Give You Neurological Disorders

[Music] weighing in at 76 pounds or 34.46 kilograms a flask of mercury in 1940 sold for between 65 and 100 it was one of the most widely used elements in gold recovery as well as having uses in scientific and industrial applications discovered in 1913 and worked intermittently from 1920 to 1942 the red rock mine produced nearly 3 000 flasks of mercury before eventually being shut down due to a lack of available workers shortly after the beginning of world war ii [Music] mercury is present in host rock known as cinnabar and is extracted by crushing and heating the rock to release the mercury as a vapor the vapor is then cooled and condensed into liquid mercury before being poured into flasks and sold as a commodity contained in high-grade pod-like ore bodies cinnabar can be a very dangerous rock to mine due to its somewhat crumbly granular nature and toxicity neurological effects such as shaking loss of sense and even death were the result of mercury poisoning now come with me as we explore nearly 5 000 feet of both dry and flooded passages deep inside the red rock mine [Music] well hey everybody welcome back okay we are back here at a cinnabar mine that i documented about this same time last year now i'm gonna go ahead and leave a link for you guys down in the description area because i do believe i recorded two episodes in this area and on one of those episodes we explored all of these buildings now while i was recording those episodes last summer i got some bad advice uh well i'm not going to name names but somebody out into the world said that the portal up in here had collapsed and that's why i didn't head in there last summer so here we are again today i've got two other people with me this is a wet mine which always indicates that the uh the safety factor is gonna go down because with wet mines you could have bad air due to rotting material and rusting metal so we're gonna head on inside this mine today and see how far we can explore it okay i'll see you inside all right this one's a little bit skinny there's no way i'm going to be able to get into this little hole with wearing my backpack so you know i always like to chuck my backpack in first because if there's going to be any snakes right there and then that's where they're going to be okay so we're going to head down into feet this feet first i've got a whole bunch of air blowing out of here and that's an excellent sign because that tells me that somewhere on this hill there's gonna be an open stop that's allowing air flow into the mine to blast out and uh that that decreases the potential of the of the bad air that i was just talking about okay let's head on inside all right yep you always get a little bit of sluft here at the entrance okay all right guys come on inside there you go good job mr m try not to put any weight on that board above your head though okay all right hey uh randy can you stay there for just a second all right and i'm gonna hand this off to you okay go ahead and point that at me because i gotta get my backpack back on here yeah i'd say the uh let's show you guys guys the depth of the water here we're probably maybe a foot and a half through here okay wet mines are always fun let's see what we have up here well i think once we get past this little bit this little area here that's why the water is pooling through this stretch because i can see a little bit of a collapse in front of us yeah you can see a rail down on the floor looking through the water here we go okay what do we have up here yep definitely the the ribs are slopping and falling down [Applause] let me uh let me turn back around here real quick and see how my compadres are doing yeah come on in guys the uh the pool is fine all right turning back around so i can see yep we've got an area of collapse here another area above my head here okay hmm well i hope we maybe oh big collapse through this section and what do we have here yeah there's the mine keeps going that way fantastic okay so that's another area i'm gonna have to skinny underneath look at all the giant rocks laying on top of that the whole top of this has failed so i'm gonna give my my partners a hand and i'll be right back okay so this must be the collapse that um that they were talking about but clearly you can get underneath there i don't know if we can go any further but before i can get underneath that client here oh that's a heavy rock to make it safe for everybody move that one okay there we go let's see here nope that's not going anywhere that's looking real good okay let's peek down in here and see what i can see well not going to be able to have the backpack on again guys it's just too skinny all right come on inside let's hope that that don't fall huh oh boy all right here we go oh fantastic it keeps on going come on in guys you're gonna love this all right look what we have here let's shoot up in there real quick perfect okay i'm gonna help my uh my guys out here i'll be right back all right back again i got everybody safely underneath that sketchy spot and uh let's see what this mine is all about we still have rail on the floor and it's it's drying up now that's a good sign we have a bunch of plumbing around there's some modern pvc pipe right there we've got a drift going off to the right we're going to save that we'll come back and revisit that on the way back out for now let's stay on the primary chances are the reason that pipe is there is they're going to be pumping out a uh a decline a winds or a drift the report said that everything from the 150 level down is flooded so all right our first or shoot that's a good sign so we've got stops above us that's where all that fresh air is coming from all right oh looky here let me look show you off to the left we have a beautiful ladder going up into the stop oh boy straight vertical that ladder looks pretty sketchy now yeah we're gonna save that one for mr m yeah we're gonna we'll send him up there first what do you think mr m huh i don't know it's the first time seeing it yeah oh heck yeah oh heck yeah he says hey randy oh by the way mr m is doing some b-roll recording for us today and that'll be a lot of fun for a future uh future episode that we're working on let's look back around here mr m are you gravitating towards a touch of madness i thought that's what you suggested you be careful up there you old filler didn't go anywhere gly it doesn't go anywhere uh-uh i gotta they've got the hole covered with the false floor i saw a terrace but the hole is covered isn't it yeah okay all right well you were making me nervous anyways get off that ladder you crazy old man [Laughter] all right guys let's keep heading on up into this old mine yeah the uh the rock and the strata on this one is very very crumbly just flaky is all get look at these old timbers here and the rock is very dark and black that's why you're having a hard time um with the lighting here we kind of have a big big room through here it's probably 30 feet wide 12 to 15 feet tall and a lot of the timbers have fallen down let's get around this we've got uh let's look off to the left here first this probably at one time was an ore pass no that just might go somewhere let me peek up into that real quick indeed no that that still goes somewhere okay we'll we'll come back and revisit that well it's just an ugly section huh guys oh man yeah it's kind of pretty this one gets scarier every 20 feet but the timbers are crumbling well let's get a close look here on the geology yeah that stuff is just really flaky i don't know what kind of mineral that is it's very uh soft and dark soft firmly yep okay what do we have up in here big area oh look at the uh the um margin between the two zones right there take a look at that right there this is really really interesting stuff i'm gonna have to uh oh there goes my crazy laser again wouldn't you know i forgot to change those batteries out now that thing's gonna come on all by itself all right let's continue on there it turned off yeah i was having that problem last weekend when we were exploring the sterling mine oh this is just beautiful look at the strata in here wow look at that that's fantastic isn't that something huh just gorgeous i'm not feeling in the air anymore here we have up in here well that's as far as they went okay so we're gonna have to work our way back to a drift that we passed so i'll see you guys back there all right what do we have up in this one well it's kind of skinny we have a whole bunch of stuff that was coming down from what looks to be it wasn't one time at all or past some kind there we go okay now just kind of sorry scooting on my belly here there we go yeah a bunch of that uh a bunch of that material was coming down from that stop made that pile let me show you guys see these are the obstacles that we have to deal with from time to time randy come on come on over here show the audience what kind of a squeeze that is not too bad but from time to time you have no choice but to crawl on your hands and knees in these places right here in this pile i found what might be a piece of cinnabar okay bring it over here let's just be iron i'm not real familiar with the color well let's show it to to the audience here there's another piece okay it does look more like iron to me but it is quite red this is quite red but that you're right that could just be iron yeah all right mr m you coming yeah okay all right okay mr m this is the perfect time to redeem yourself please tell everybody your real age i'm 64. 64 years old guys yeah yeah anytime in july is a good time to send me something for my birthday i wear a seven and three quarter hat an extra large shirt 11 size 11 shoes and a 32 inch waist if you want to buy me an outfit good job look at you go all right all righty we're just having all kinds of fun today oh we've got drift to the right but it looks like it collapsed huh randy yeah or they deliberately filled it in looks like was there some cribbing here yeah that all came down well we're not going that way are we okay well let's uh just back straight up you notice this material hanging out for the ceiling i did yeah what is that well some people think that that's tree roots but really it's not all right what's up in here we've got a drift to the left let's shoot up in there all right we'll explore that on the way back but for now let's stay on the primary again boy they just have this mind like swiss cheese wow nice big area with what's this oh at one time rail came off right there i think i lost my focus here here we go not sure quite why they made that pit that's real interesting all right looking over this direction again another drift going off that way we'll come back and revisit that i can see what's left of a dynamite box over there but let's stay on the primary here's what's left of a union carbide tin right there and an old bottle look at that mr m right there looks like jamison you think one of my long distant relatives have was in this mine yeah that's my favorite flavor is jameson irish whiskey when i do partake but i don't very often okay what's up here oh and that's gonna be the end okay let's head back to that drift that we just missed i'll see you over there okay so a moment ago we were just right up there now we're gonna head down this drift and see what's hiding up in here like i was saying i saw what was left of a there's an old dynamite box i've seen much better we've got a little thing going off this direction but it ran i'm pretty sure it stops yep that's as far as it goes okay off to my right go ahead mr m i like that i like to send him first once in a while because it gives you guys an idea of the size of these places oh cool look at this hanging wall i know nice and smooth look at that uh-huh that's neat it is over feel it yeah yep so when the when the mountain is uplifting those two are rubbing up against each other okay that's called a shear but when the uh the ore is filling in the area between the hanging wall and the foot wall okay that's your that's your vein or your zone of ore right through there all right what do we have up in here anything interesting just some really cool geology with more of them quartz stringers look at that right there okay time to work our way back to the next rift i'll see you guys back there okay we're back to the next drift that we bypassed on the way in so a moment ago we were just right up there past randy now we're gonna head down this one yeah so last year i was here um i should say last year when i was here i was solo exploring and uh when i peeked down into this mine well first of all i had the information in my head that this mo that it had collapsed and i wasn't going to be able to get into it anyways and the second thought that went through my head is this isn't the mind the type of mind that you should be solo exploring anyways so i'm really happy that today i've got my two companions with me we're having a lot of fun in this mine what do you see up there guys somebody burned this one out fire and lit a fire up it really you see little that's a ladder still hanging out there yeah it looks it looks burnt or very very decomposed no that's deep that's decomposition that's not a fire you think so yeah the wood turns tends to turn black like that so we still might want to give it a try yeah yeah you go right ahead there go get your rope all right what do we have down here yeah just more that's what happens in these wet lines the wood turns black with decomposition all right looking back where we came from anything interesting hiding on the side of that barrel not really nothing in there there's something in there it's some kind of a white no duffel bag full of heads you know okay so what we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to warm our way back over that pile of dirt to get back to the drifts off of the primary and go explore those so i'll see you over there so while i'm working my way back to that pile of dirt we have to crawl back over i i kind of confessed to my friends here that i am a red green color blind and that's why i always get the nasty m m's and that's why all right and that's why i see see randy keeps saying cinnabar's red cinnabar is red well heck granny if i couldn't see red to save my life anyway so he's trying to make a poem that starts with cinnabar as red and he can't figure out anything that rhymes with it yeah now you know why you get all the green m ms there mr m okay wiggling our way back through this spot again see you on the other side okay so we're by the next drift we bypassed just passed randy there that's where we just came from now we've got to go down the one with the pvc pipe here all right let's see where this goes mr m all right you're looking pretty filthy today well i was minding my own business hey well you just crawling around in the dirt like a little pig or what this is beautiful what do you see in here this is nice come on in you guys all right oh all kinds of neat stuff in here fantastic look at here all right let's show you we've got an accumulator all kinds of wires which probably ran to a pump um this is a very modern operation so yeah look at okay so down here we've got a decline and that's where they're probably saying it's flooded yep oh i can see the water be careful mr ram you can see the water right there but i might go down there and explore it anyways all right turning around this way what do we have another another accumulator here we've got a big 55 gallon drum let's look let's see what's hiding over here all right it goes up and turns the quarter with rail keeps going off that direction and we've got something above us yeah it went way up there okay i tell you what before we head off this direction let's turn back around here and uh this is interesting but this is pre-barcode days yeah so the reason that you all always find antifreeze bottles in these mines from newer newer miners or prospectors is they would put that uh in the airlines for the drills and that kind of helped with the condensation problem as well as the drills i don't know if they froze up or not i you wouldn't think so oh this is pretty darn cool here look it or shoot or shoot oh don't touch nothing real sketchy through here let's look up in here and see if it's something we can get around without dying gosh i hope so yeah carefully i think we can pull it off yep wow look at the size of this okay hold on a second let me get over here get my footing there we go come on mr m you're gonna like this beautiful now this is where the epic music oh my god should come in [Music] look at the size of that stuff come on randy look at that that's interesting that's as big as a house yep what do you think randy isn't that something looks like pickup sticks sure does it's crazy just incredible all right what's uh what's over here i think i'm gonna head up this way guys we're following you bye here we go boy it is chilly in here isn't it it's what in the low 50s pretty darn chilly what is that oh no that's not dynamite something else okay going past a bunch of vent pipe here around the corner and it looks like it's coming to an end yep that's as far as that's as far as it goes right here okay well we didn't travel very far guys so i'm just gonna take you with me we will walk right back where we came from there we go this is pretty spectacular huh isn't it guys yeah yeah but the just just always remember this stuff you're seeing on the ground here it came down from above so be watch out randy look at this red be very mindful of the of the cracks in the geology above your heads okay all right we're back into the big room now we're gonna work our way into this next area looks like the miners piled up a whole bunch of lumber here let's see if we can see like yeah like i'm already kind of committed here mr m so but you see that beam above my head i do if that thing broke i'd be a goner okay what's down here wow how am i gonna get down there because see the drift continues right there oh i really want to get over there and you know what if i if i can get down to that ladder i can use the ladder to get back out okay um shoot nope that's not from the mine that's from my breath i was gonna say something to you yeah hey mr m funny guys they just made a bad breath joke that a i don't have bad breath here can you hold that for a second yeah that thing will shut off here in a moment at least i think it will yeah there that's what happens when you when you breathe into it let's see if i can get down here yeah there we go you're like a ninja yeah there now get back out of here perfect okay let's go let's go explore this area all right now there's uh if any of you guys decide to come with me two rungs on this ladder are busted so be real careful i gotta get up this oh goodness okay all right let me show you what we're doing here all right oops lost the focus here there we go who wants to go down the ladder of doom huh randy we're going to watch you and see how far you go down this here okay not a bad idea turn around i'll let you know what i find all right oh oh i found a bat here's a little bat right here he's hibernating right there never wagon a hibernating bat that's very important oh gotta catch my breath here we have up here yeah it's good that they didn't come up this far because that's as far as it goes right there cool geology though just chasing all them stringers all right well i'm going to head back there climb back up that crazy ladder we're gonna see how much more of this mine we can explore so i'll see you back there i don't know how you guys talk me into this all the time but you're the most gullible in case this doesn't work we can come back and meet you later yeah okay bring your lunch let's see here if i stay there nope that ain't gonna work there we go yeah i make it look easy don't i you do uh-huh yeah okay guys all right let's see what else this mine has to offer go ahead randy just don't touch that beam there look at the mold on this board here giant cylinder good job so one time there was a oh 127 drift right there that's what that said okay i can get up here yeah that's me that breed didn't do it again okay mr m could you please hold on to that absolutely and uh you're gonna be the cameraman here nice and we're gonna need to turn that on okay and uh that's because there we go i want everybody to see the size of this place wow isn't this something huh you believe this unbelievable oh my god yep let me get up to this rock wow okay so you guys are going to want to see this so come on up here with me all right that's where we just came from right down there so i'm taking you up into this big stop okay look at this look at those stalls those stalls are 15 feet long 15 to 18 feet and these here off to my left are holding up just a massive amount of rock um the safest way to do this is to stay along this side there we go i'm gonna take you guys higher and higher i'll show you show you something i saw here a moment ago okay this is well i can get right up here yeah there we go this is looking this is looking pretty good oh we've got we got a little thing going off that way cool all right but before i show you that let's turn back around and you can see everybody down there in the bottom but look at that stall right here they strapped a ladder onto it to climb up and to get to get to that raise that raise has got to be 40 30 to 40 feet up there can you imagine can you just imagine climbing that ladder on that stall to get to that you got to be out of your mind unbelievable i have nothing but respect for those old miners now over here we've got something that goes up this way let's see if i can get there guys in just a second i got to get my footing yep what do we have oh look at there yeah this is as far as i can go but it goes all the way up there let me zoom in to another really big area just another giant stop and i can feel air in my face here so one of these stops goes outside okay i think there's one more thing to explore and that was that decline shaft so let's head over there and see what that's all about so randy here found some cinnabar right there it's like a deposit maybe hydrothermal inside the rock does that look does that look red to you guys oh yeah see i i don't know it's a little bit different than iron oxide it's got a different tint to it it's definitely red it is red yeah let me get a good look on that guys let me try to get the camera focused in here they they used to make a paint for marine applications to keep barnacles from growing on the bottom of ships using cinnabar and they call it vermilion oh really well that's interesting okay well we've got another place to explore and that's right down here here's our decline they've got a little pulley i don't know if you call what do you call that mr m that's not a pulley it's just a that's just a gun a guide pulley yeah so the cable doesn't rub on the ground right there but the um the line goes down this way and so this goes down to the 150 foot level according to the mind report let's just go 40 50 feet here to see if there isn't any drifts hiding that would go left and right another thing i'm kind of curious about i'm curious of the air quality right down here let's see if my monitor goes off when we get down to water level there's going to be a pocket that's where it's going to be this stuff is flaky wow oh yeah look at how rotten and ugly these timbers are but you can see you can see my breath down in here oh we may have a drift let's look okay here we are yeah we we do have water and let's look here okay looking off that direction it doesn't doesn't look like it's going anywhere nope stops right there and it's all collapsed right here is a i'm standing on a false floor and indeed the drift would have kept going deeper and deeper let's see if i can show you guys that without falling through this and taking a bath here we go yeah indeed it would have kept going totally filled with water okay oh again i think that was my breath let's look around the corner here [Music] oh it keeps going all right we gotta wait for the o2 sensor to be quiet and double check make sure that that wasn't see if that was my breath or not give me just a moment okay yep just as i thought it was my breath all right get a little bit wet through here [Applause] and i see where our water's coming from look here let me show you guys right there we got a spring trickling water coming out of that drill hole and over here the same thing water coming out of that drill hole more of the quartz stringers running through that formation around the corner here that's all there is all i'm seeing is a old board and a piece of pipe of some kind i don't think that that's drill steel let me take you back over here to the decline [Applause] i'll bet this water is pretty chilly i'm glad i've got these on i'm gonna look up here real quick yeah no that's as far as it goes we're not getting that way all right turning back around turning back around is the decline and now we're just gonna go ahead and head back up that direction okay i'm gonna head back up to mr m and randy i'll see you up there and see if there's anything else i can show you guys in this really cool cinnabar mine i'll see you up there all right guys well that's gonna have to do it for this weekend's adventure i really appreciate you coming along on this fantastic explore of a cinnabar mine this is where they would go to get all of the mercury that was used in towns all across the state of nevada like in goldfield and tonopah mercury was an important thing back in the day and you needed mines like this to to get that out so so with that um we're going to get on out of here and look for another cool mine to show you guys for next weekend okay take care now bye bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] mr m's doing the splits up here really for a guy your age you can you can split your legs that far i'm impressed that's i've been practicing for american ninja warrior were you a gymnast in a or in your previous life or i know i know miss mr m you used to train with nadia coleman each right yeah don't make me what's that randy you can picture mr m and a leotard oh don't okay

Channel: Abandoned and Forgotten Places

Views: 168,764

Keywords: A&FP, Abandoned, Forgotten, Places, Mine, Mines, Tunnel, Exploring, Adventure, Hiking, Artifacts, Antiques, Geology, Prospecting, Gold, Silver, Quartz, Dynamite, Blasting, Adit, Gly, Bobbie, Quackers, Gly Coolness, Old Bob, Old Mine, Old Building, Gold Mine, Ghost Town, Abandoned Mine, Abandoned Mines, Abandoned Place, Abandoned Places, Forgotten Place, Forgotten Places, Mine Exploring, Abandoned Mine Exploring, Exploring Abandoned Mines, Abandoned and Forgotten Places, Abandoned & Forgotten Places

Id: VO33oUqd7u4

Length: 50min 50sec (3050 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020