Bringing An Abandoned Gold Mine Back To Life: Part 3 of ?

well you can track the passage of time by the amount of snow melting off the ridges over there i even try and remember to show more stuff on the outside because stuff always is changing out here as well we put a wooden frame around the blower to try and quiet it down a little bit it helped a little it's not quite as loud i can actually hear somebody talk if they're standing over here but uh it's still freaking loud we've got the thousand foot mark right there the outside is that direction and i don't think i've shown you what's up here yet so we're gonna work on that a bunch of old communications electrical cable in here i was just pulling out because it was getting all tangled up in your car in the track this black plastic line right there is a brand new one just put in to power the pneumatic equipment [Applause] still a lot of water in here [Applause] you can see how much quartz is mixed in though we're getting closer toward the vein or i should say one of the veins some timbers starting up again here this is kind of interesting you can see where there was a spur running off to the left there i see the rail going back there and yet if you look at it now you're not going back there anytime soon i mean you can hardly even tell there's a drift there that is it looks almost solid but according to the map there was something running back there being a while before we got that open and then of course you see the i had to keep turning that way we're starting on mucking this out to try and drain it and we will eventually back there is a raise that connects all three levels of this mine back that way i'll show you that later i just want to show you the main one right now but remember this one because this one is significant we just fixed this this morning um all that stuff all that muck right there was strewn across the ray hill rail here so we put that lagging in and then pitched all the muck and the rock back behind it so now it's a lot easier to get the ore car through here not fighting with it anymore same thing here on this corner there's a bunch of debris that have fallen across the rail this one actually runs back away as you can see and then up but that's some nasty serpentine you can see how it's all slabbing down see that vein of quartz right there this is an older airline we didn't put this one in this airline i'm assuming is from the crew in the 1990s see they uh it was coming down this side and they bridged it over so now it's running down the other side i don't know why they did that but they did you see the old electrical insulators obviously from the crews in the 1930s or 20s i'm going to turn my miners light off because for me it's actually distracting so carrying on with the miners light off that light is so focused that whatever it hits it just wipes everything out and whatever it's hitting speaking of widening things out look at this quartz right here it's a pretty thick vein that blob of it right there i don't know how far back that might run but somebody took a sample there if you look you can see the whiteness keeps running back so presumably that is a vein rather than just a blob but there's more up here that's for sure it's a little uh junction here we just put all that stuff up today because that's sketchy sketchy back there that just intersects the attic we're on again right back there but you can see a bunch of stuff is dribbling down there and it's just an area to toss bits of metal and things like that from the prior cruise like i said we just put all this caution tape up this morning you see they that's looking back where we just were right there little side drift right here actually it tossed a bunch of waste rock back there this is where we finally picked up some they call these bacon strips uh those are rock bolts right there and there and these strips of steel are called bacon strips by the miners and you can see they put the chain link fence as well it's interesting because we're really deep in the mine now this is the first time that we've seen those these timbers here are quite old and they're actually pretty sketchy because the end of the log rots first and they only jam those in a couple inches and there's just a ton [Music] of stuff above us that seems like it could come down at any time so that'll be a priority to get that taken care of see all the quartz above me there through here looking ahead here now you're starting to see the vein this is all ports over here you see the old timers knew about it too because they cleared a lot out over my head in fact if you look up through there there's a real tall stop here really chase it up and find it yeah see now we're starting to get a better view of it but it goes even higher than that i don't know how much i would trust these timbers but yeah if you look this is hard filming this because there's all this timber supporting the way with that runs way up there and of course quartz main runs this way as well despite all the wood back here the air is surprisingly good you see how the rack the uh racks the rails almost disappear into the silt here we're gonna have to dig that out because it's almost impossible to push the ore car through this now we're getting old school timbers these are from the original cruise 100 years ago or so this is their work and i gotta say it's actually held up pretty well another junction here there's a drift running off this way you can see some of the more modern stuff from the 1990s toss back here i think we're gonna make this a drill station back that way you can see how things are slabbing down right here this is sketchy obviously hence the the rock bolts and the um chain link fence over on this side they had a workshop set up that's just a bunch of wood that we need to clear out but decent little chamber here and actually gives you a decent view of the quartz main again see i've got some cribbing right there helping support that the sheet metal is somewhat protecting this from having a bunch of water drip down on it but not a lot that tank that big tank under there this i'm just there's a little dynamite box right there this stuff is from the crew in the 1990s mixed in with some older stuff as well this stuff looks a lot older this drift i forgot to mention that's the end right there doesn't go any farther than that that's just some wood toss back there and a more modern extension ladder again from the crew in the 1990s so there's a good view of a rock bolt that's the top of it right there you can see it driven in there here's a look at the timber supports from the inside this runs way up as well i'll try and get a view of it for you that's not easy that's where you're just looking there's a better spot over here i think yeah this is it see the side of the field or shoot right there sorry i'm my breath has generated so much steam it's hard to there you go that's a good view of that is the side where she right there i just keep running up but you can see the quartz is up there right there for example and it carries over as well so they took out a fair amount there i was looking up that double decker timber support because it took all that quartz over our heads out see the fault right here see how flat and smooth that is and then this is as far as we've gotten for obvious reasons 1660 160 feet in we've got this look at all the courts back here look at all that delicious quartz old rusty saw back here see there we've been using rail for spilling it's pretty bad these are these are huge huge chunks these aren't something that we can just toss in their car and haul out it doesn't have to be broken up now i actually squeezed nobody else has been back here i actually squeezed along the side here and looked back there and i'd have to shove some timbers and other things out of the way which i didn't really want to do but i could see it did keep going the attic is open after this but there's a lot of ground fall in it um the ground along the vein here seems fairly weak so it keeps going essentially straight from what i could see i could probably see another 60 feet ahead or so and aside from the ground fall which didn't look huge it didn't look like it would be a big problem like this to clear out it is open keeps going so it'll be very interesting to see what is beyond this because we still have another thousand feet or so to get past this so curious about that looking forward to that if you'll recall in another segment i talked about how the raise was back here well i'm going to go back there and show you the rays real quickly this is the main haulage at it behind me here that's the weight of the portal and this is the way deeper in the mine but i have not shown you how things look back here yet so we're gonna go take care of that right now i don't know if i mentioned it in the last video but we're gonna have to muck all this stuff out to drain this and make it easier to access this i don't feel any airflow back here now but our goal is to clear out the top at it and get this raised cleared out so we can have ventilation and also an emergency escape a little pocket right there finally come out of the water over there i think i can feel rail beneath my feet in the mud but i'm not sure there's so much mud in here that i guess has come down the rays that hard to tell okay here slopping through it a few guys have been back here but not many since we broke through to this section that's just a little side drift with some metal scraps and such toss back there nothing of huge significance very drippy and very drippy through here very dark rock through here that's how dark that rock is okay now we're coming up to it this is all luck that's been dragged out from the rays not by us but by some probably the crew of the 1990s i say they cut a little trench through there as well help drain things the raise is just back there i'll show you in a minute i want to show you the end of this first i also really want to show you this this is a wooden skip car that they were sending up and down the rays probably with tools in it but how cool is this trucks on it and little wheels it's almost cute isn't it and then back here you see some blast sheets [Music] i'm going to take just show you what's back here it's nothing too terribly exciting i'm going to show you that raise a little bit of quartz back here as if they were falling out a little bit maybe just get an assay off of it i guess it didn't assay out too well because they didn't chase it and then you've got a couple old dynamite boxes back here and there and then that's the face right there i'm back at that cool wooden skip car i'm going to show you the raise which is behind me here that's the way we came in so you can orient yourself some more quartz right here all on there and then this is the raise you can see all the infrastructure has rotted and come sliding down here at the bottom there's a look up kind of hard to tell but it keeps going up and i don't feel the airflow but it doesn't look collapsed or anything like that so i think it's the the top at it that's blocked eventually this will have to get cleared out and then the uh this trip just ends back there this is all quartz here though along this rays and the top right there as well the back as miners call it that's all courts that's been decent for them to follow it up as far as they did to connect all three levels that's where we are now i'll start shooting again when we've broken into some new areas or done something interesting or doing something interesting and try and keep you guys updated i want to show you this this bottle here is full of water and we think a miner in the past stabbed that piece of wood in there he uses a cork this was his drinking water for the day he took it in and just corked it with a splinter of woody found somewhere i thought it was pretty cool i mean if i've been there a hundred years maybe they had lunch and this little side drift right here who knows pretty cool though huh i'm in that workshop right now and the uh to refresh your memory that big collapse is back that way and the portal is back there where that ore car is and we've been working on clearing out the wooden here to uh actually restore this area's uh original roll as a workshop and we'll put a drill station back there we're clearing the wood out from uh back there as well however that's not why i turned the camera on turn the camera on because of this do you see that water spurting out right there i just cleared some wood from here 10 minutes ago and that was not there at all this just started within the past few minutes but that water is spurting out like that now there's a fissure here and water has been dribbling out of there the whole time you know ever since we pushed back here so and you can tell it's been doing it for at least years given how things are eating away there but this just start you see how the water is still filling up the ladder i just put that ladder there when i move the wood out and it hasn't even finished filling up the ladder yet so that just started happening that's so weird i've never seen that before and if you watch it for a second it kind of goes and spurts of course it's not gonna do it now that i said that but yeah okay i just did it a second there isn't that crazy just started out of nowhere another day in the mine what are we up to today you might ask well that's the portal back that way this is that drift that has the rays coming up off it back that way and so today our project is to muck out all this material is built up here we're a couple or cars in already here's the one we just filled about to haul that out sweaty work it's nice and cool underground it's hot outside but this is still sweaty work we're gonna bust that big rock up right there next that's uh uh it's like three feet across a couple feet high and extends back that way as well someone we could just lift out and we're just chipping away at this pile this is all from the last crew here that blasted this section out and all the muck dropped down here and for some reason they never cleared it out they just left it so that's what we're working on now the right side there that's the original rib that they added and then where i'm standing actually is well i'm inside what was the old rib the older rib you sort of look at the curvature of the side right there would it run sort of we're actually where that pipe is right there roughly this is all new space that's been cleared out and the debris from that is what we're working on clearing out now and once this is cleared out we can drain that and supposedly there's rail back there underneath all the mud so once that's drained out this is clear that we can start scraping that mud off and get that passage back to the rays opened up clear out all the debris the bottom on the maze and start working up from there all right we're boring down some rock here in this section we're working in pretty good chunk of quartz actually there we go that's pretty chunky stand next to that real quickly so people can see how big that is yeah those are big enough we wouldn't want them falling down reveal any gold oh yeah a whole vein a high grade but perfect solid gold huh solid gold perfect

Channel: TVR Exploring

Views: 46,347

Rating: 4.9790468 out of 5

Keywords: bringing an abandoned gold mine back to life, exploring abandoned mines, abandoned mine, opening gold mine, rehabbing gold mine, rehabbing mine, ghost town, minecraft, underground gold mining, timber sets, gold mine construction, adit, stope, winze, mining techniques, ore car, msha

Id: dWUm6T-PY5w

Length: 25min 51sec (1551 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021