Craziest Month Yet Living In An Abandoned Ghost Town!

good morning welcome to the abandoned mining town of sarog Gordo where at the moment there's no power there's no way on or off the mountain and things are getting a little cold but the month hasn't always been like this you know earlier this month it was sunny I did some mining for silver we searched for tagged bats did some building projects around the town and a whole lot more [Music] winter is here that is something that is very evident this month you know I had convinced myself that this year we were just going to skate by and not have that bad a winter but uh today marks the third day with no power up here in town which also makes the third day where there's so much snow in the road that it's basically impossible to come and go you know 4 days ago I cut my finger really bad with a drone had to go to the Urgent Care and getting back up here was all sorts of nightmares all right and this is it this is as far as DWP decided to go which is probably a smart call it's very steep here in a moment so beyond here we probably have still another oh 2 and 1 half to 3 mil to town you can see the town is still in the clouds up there it's going to be hard going so we'll see how much further we can make it come on come on all right I am less than a mile from town I tried to go up this way wasn't working turned around back on Solid Ground now but if I get punched through so Edison then can get through and fix our power otherwise I'm stuck here or going back to the keer and the town has no power the best option seems to be out in this outer Ridge you know I can at least get a little bit of dirt out here but then I'm right by the side of a cliff which if you start sliding you know the whole truck could just slide over but we're looking at a pretty hard slog to town from here so I'm just going to do a little bit of scouting I mean maybe if I'm just gunning it along this side I think the best approach might be to go fast along this side don't do any crossing over that way if I do get stuck I just it's a I have my path back down I'm not going sideways stick on this side I sure a lot of you out there have better suggestions on how to do this and you will let me know but for right now you're not here so I got to do what I can to get up [Music] town all right this little bit is all deep there's no great option so before I do anything dumb I try to find some low points n it's so deep right here not that side how deep is it over here so deep over here too look at that there's no not getting into town we're headed back all right I turned back around and I can easily just go down but I'm not really the type to give up as you may know with s gon otherwise and this final like let's say 200 Y and they in the home clear there's no more inclines to go up it's a straight grade so that'll be easy to go over it is the spinal in line of 100 to 150 yard that's causing me some issues could depart waited out but what am I going to do on keer and here it is this is enough perseverance we made it back to town I got to say no matter how many times you've had days like this they don't get any easier all right so here's what's going on there's a lot of snow in town not much to do above ground there's no power in town and because the road up is like how it is the power company can't get to town to fix the power whatever that would be so the hope today is to clear the half mile road so this truck can get up to the Hoist and then kind of take it from there you know we don't have a snow plow or a snow cat to get around it just wasn't in the financial cards this year but we do have a snow blower and some help and so on days when there's no power there's a lot of snow there's more storms coming it's just clearing roads all right up here at the Hoist and you can see the snow is very deep and so the goal right now is to try to get this Ford to the road so that way we can maybe use the Ford as kind of like a battle Ram or a plow to get some of the snow out of the way but to do that is going to be a lot of work just to begin with so the Adventure Continues it's going to be a little bit longer but I think we got to at least clear from here where it's at the 60 yard or so to the top of the road and hope that gravity takes over from there and gets it down the road but doing what we can we've got ourselves a road just wide enough for the truck so now the hope is that the truck can get down here and we going start making our roads so we're about to find out winter is here I guess the question now is how long it's going to [Music] stay not a lot of progress happening with this deep as snow so I'm going to head 900 ft underground where I've been building out a hotel suite of sorts it's actually pretty good timing because I also have to record the audio book for the book that I'm putting together so we're going to go head down 900 ft into the Min shaft continue building the room and uh record an audio [Music] book we're down here 900 feet underground we got internet we got power those were months in the making and now it's about to get fun now we are St to build a house down here I don't know what to call it an apartment a sweet sweet sounds the best so we're about to build a sweet I see myself longterm just moving in down here just spending months my apartment at the 900 level imagine if I turned every level into an [Music] apartment just about unpacked down here at the 900 we got water obviously I have my book that I need to read in the next day or two the microphone to do that got some end tables chair Cur cuz I need to get some tea to keep my kind of voice good while I'm reading the book what else should I put down here I am open to all ideas it's going to be many trips down here to fill this thing and so if you had a 900t level mine I mean this mine's huge miles of Mines what else should I put down here bowling alley I mean long term this could just be [Music] [Applause] amazing all right it's looking pretty clean in here after only a couple hours of work on the floor I think now before I bust out the bed and call it a day for night one I need to get into the audio book we will begin with chapter one chapter one pick your spot and swing it started as a relatively straightforward task William buroh Schmidt a prospector was tired of bringing his gold ore around a mountain late start on the book but we got two chapters down and I'm going to preserve my voice for the rest of the day I'm going to fold out the bed make some dinner and go to [Music] bed [Music] so today I need to continue recording I need to do more recording than I do fixing up the place I did a lot of fixing up yesterday I got really excited about seeing the space transform but today I need to do a lot more recording and I think I'm going to try to deaden the noise even more so over here you can see what I'm working with I'm going try to put up some blankets so that way it's a little bit dead of a [Music] sound as I'm down at the 9 00 I think about this story that happened here in 1877 and that night there was three miners working down at the 900t level and there is 10 more above them at the 700 and up in the Hoist house a huge fire broke out you know a bunch of buildings were consumed and luckily one of the guys at the 700t level was by the main shaft and he looked up he saw the fire and he was able to contact the guys down at the 900t level to hey come on up so they went up to the 700 and they waited you know waiting to see if the fire is going to rush down the shaft and kill all of them or what was going to happen and up top a guy named Porter sent a couple men down to the 190t level to build a platform put some Timbers across put some dirt on top of that to stop the fire from going any deeper in the mine cuz at the 200t level there's an exit to the outside and in the end the whole hoist house burned down you know a bunch of buildings five or six cabins 300 cords of wood but the shaft below the 200t level was saved as were the 13 men below and so this is just one of the many stories I think about as I'm kind of wandering through the shafts of the 900 level so I think that the audio book is complete book's coming out March 19th so thank you guys so much if you check it out I'm going to take this recorder back to a very special part of the mine and record a little bonus segment frame r that orders it ahead of time so if you order the book email your receipt to the email address below that same day you'll get sent this recording so let's go find this spot and talk about it so the other big point of creating this room down here was have a base point to jump off and try to explore the five additional levels of the Union mine so for the longest time it was thought that the mine stopped at the 900t level maybe there's a foot below it we've found some maps a while back there's actually five additional levels down below where I am right now if we were able to get through should theoretically lead to some additional miles of mine that were no long no no one has explored no one has really well documented and it drops down to the 1290 level so between 900 and 1290 there's a 390 ft drop so you imagine there must be some type of Machinery back there whether it's an additional hoist system or whatever it is there's a way that they're getting a lot of ore down from these bottom levels all right so this is it this is an intersection actually when we're digging around this goes over that way to the left then it goes over and then it curves around and there's a winds that should go down to the lower five levels and that would just be so so cool to get to those lower levels again thank you guys so so much for all the support over the years if you have the ability to if you pre-order the audiobook it would just mean the world to me you know pre-orders mean so much for books success in the market and so with that if you do ahead of time I'm going to record a little something special now and then we're going to get right back into everything else going on around [Music] Coto all right it's just about time for my first trip down here staying to end the audiobook is done need some more cleaning up what I want to do now is I'm going to take a 3D map of this area I'm going to get some Dimensions I'm going to take some photos I'll put those Below in the description if you're out there and you're an interior designer if you're an architect if you're just somebody that wants to creatively think about a space let me know I'm going put an email in there too a different email and uh hit me with some ideas and maybe we'll bring some of these to life maybe some you I could bring out here to help with the project if you want um but I think this going to be a really really really cool space and just like that my first trip down to get the audiobook done is complete so we are going to leave and go see what else is going on around s Gordo this past month we got a lot [Music] there's a bat directly above me in this mine and I've always been fascinated with them you know even before sarog Gordo I was into bats I remember as a kid I would doodle them in the margins of my notebook bats are very curious creatures and I think they kind of get a bad rap you know with the moment that I started going in minds and seeing bats people started saying you know every bat has rabies you have to avoid it or you know bats suck blood or bats are blind and this and that and most of those are myths but this month I was very lucky because I had a visit from Dr Mike Morrison a retired professor of wildlife ecology that's been studying bats in the ow Valley since 1991 Mike has tagged over 4,000 bats and his is literally the bat expert especially when it comes to bats in an abandoned mind nice to meet you welcome watching all your YouTube videos thank you so Mike came to visit and we dove into some of these myths as well as some more facts related to bats and bats and abandoned Minds all right we're ready this is so awesome this is like a dream come true doing this my dad would be jealous yeah all right this is it one right here already let me turn this off all right awesome so this reads like this and then I've got in my pocket I've got a a tag these guys are always exposed like this they won't go up into any cracks they could be like one could be right like that right but they won't go up into any cracks okay so it it's tagged Wow first one is tagged look at that the first one is T so all I do now is keep track back of how many we see okay so and is it saving each one that you see yep it's Sav and and before we turn this off and we go back up I'll write them down cuz I don't trust a computer right once we were in the mines Mike was quick to identify bats even tagged ones were you part of tagging all the bats in this region so like every one of them so you've seen that bat before then yes that's crazy and and when I get home tonight and I go through all this I will which one email you where everyone that's tagged came from cool between 25 and 30% of the bats I find in the winner are tagged okay I won't be surprised we only get a few tagged here but that's fine I mean everyone is yeah big big news as we snaked through the shafts we found a few in the Stope right by the Hoist two three four the [Music] tag I don't know if the cord I don't think I if I can you need to hold on to this or well it's not that it's the the telescoping no what's going to happen is there's I didn't bring the wall the cable's going I I didn't think about that far let me see something here some were tucked away in hard to reach places but Mike brought the right equipment for the job no he's not tagged right tagged oh nice there you go see cool that's 15 yeah go ahead yeah there you go how comfortable are you with scrambling places I'm F okay I scramble all the time so that hole up there leads over this collapse where right up here yeah okay and then over that is where all the bats that I saw were the Jefferson chimney is just beyond this okay so you want put the ladder up here and go over that yeah it's just a little uh it's not more than a little it's quite precarious that's fine all the gear okay oh yeah no it just came off my hand cool once we climbed over the collapse towards the Jefferson chimney the bats really started to show up tagged nice 17 18 19 20 there were clusters of bats all along the shaft leading us to believe that the bats are probably entering the mine from the Jefferson chimney looking closer at them I saw more of the beauty of the creatures no matter my past experiences with them there we go you see how the one's got his ear out yeah see that's what they normally look like that's so thatd be a pair so we got 32 plus a pair so did they come from this crack in the ground this way or did they go this I think that they found cu the the crack when only the surface to a surface deposit and once they realized that they started intersecting it below to let gravity do the work and then mine up and this to your right is the Jefferson chimney so it's going to be pretty big opening wow and so this or deposit went from the surface it went down 1100 ft this goes way up um holy oh there's bad up there you can probably reach that one hold it up as high as you can once I get I can hang it on that I just don't like to right 44 W you said 30 or 40 while we're at 44 yeah so you're pretty good this is fact not brag I've been told by bat biologist this is the most intensive largest Geographic scale longterm bat study going on anywhere of tagged bats for an animal that lives that long yeah you kind of got to follow them for a long time to kind of to figure out what's going on yeah so besides movements and sight use Roost use we'll find out about survival rates of males and females different strategies where they breed in winter so it's a lot of different kinds of d having Mike up this month was awesome I just think that anytime somebody's that's passionate about something you just can't help but care more and Mike did that for bats with me they eat bugs they eat mosquitoes and everybody hates mosquitoes they pollinate fruit if you like tequila they're the reason tequila exists they pollinate the agave plant they are even being used to study how infectious diseases spread white nose syndrome is a result of a fungus that was introduced around New York from overseas from Europe in about I think it was 1997 although I'm not sure the exact year and what it does it uh gets on their nose and Wings and Things it call causes skin irritation okay and and so in the winter you see this white powdery stuff so it doesn't get into their lungs or anything what it does for hibernating bats it irritates them so they can't sleep if you can't sleep means you're going to use your energy which means you starve to death right so white no syndrome kills bats by having them starve to death in the end we had seen 45 bats and Mike was able to identify four of them as tagged four of them we couldn't reach with the pole to uh check and four of them were tagged for this far south in the stud is about what I expected 10% and so tonight I'll look and see where they were tagged so probably one of the maternity colonies very cool very fine very very good yeah yeah three of the bats had spent time in the big silver mine and the final one was tagged in the snowflake mine in 2020 overall I really enjoyed the time down in the mine with Mike and it deepened my appreciation for the bats I just think now when I'm in the mine there's a little kinship with the bats and that just makes it more interesting more special less of a mystery and more of just part of my life and so if you're out there give bats a chance I'll link below to some more of Mike's research but overall I just feel you know a little bit more comfortable around the bats now that I'm down here and I've learned a little bit about [Music] them this month also had a lot of mining refining and smelting silver I need to make 10 oz of pure silver and it might not seem like a lot but 10 o of silver is going to take a very long time so the main thing they remind me here at sagoro was named Galina and Galina is a lot of lead some sulfur a little bit of silver some silica some other trace minerals as well and so the name of the game is to take the Galina and get everything out but silver here at sagoto the biggest deposit of that Galina was directly behind me in the union mine but luckily Galina isn't the only place to get the silver up here at Sero Gordo due to a little Wrinkle In chemistry and refining back in the day there's a lot of silver left in the slag and slag is basically the waste from a refining process so I started thinking you know where else can I pull from to maybe get some of the silver that I need for this 10 oz and a place that came to mind is a place called Lower Cog Gordo and lower sordo is an area of town where some of the original deposits of silver were found and in the early literature they said that some of the highest silver content were pulled from these early deposits and so as I'm thinking about it you know it's very early in the process the smelters aren't as refined as they were once bellshaw got up here so maybe the slag down in lower Coto has a lot of silver in it that I can kind of recover and that way saved me a lot of trips down the mine and so that I made a trip down to lower Soro to try to recover some silver out of the slag down there all right so this e behind me is one of the original vasos here at Cog Gordo so this is what the Mexican miners were to set up to refine the silver way back in the day this is about as old as it gets probably pre 1865 so 1860s they create these odobi vasos take the Galina melt it down here and refine their silver so what we're going to do so we're going look on the ground for slag and so as you can see over here any of these glassy bits like this this is the slag this is the waste material that came off of the Galina and as refining got better they got better of getting all all of the silver actually out of it so I'm going to collect some of this original slag some of the oldest stuff from one of the most rich silver strikes that over here and we're going to re-refine it and see how much silver they left behind which will be cool because then we'll hopefully end with a bead of silver from the original strike up here at Cog Gordo so I'm going to collect a couple pounds of this maybe 10 15 lbs of slag from the area around we're going to go back up to my new shop we're going to refine it down and we're going to see how much silver they left behind all right back in the shop this is the stuff from that original smelter I'm going to crush it up right now then we're going to add the flux and everything bring it over and get it smelting let's see how much silver these people left behind all right so we got all that old slag down to a little bit smaller bits we're going to add in some soda ash and then we're going to add in some iron into this Crucible we're going to heat it back up like they did when they originally made this we're going to try to see if there's any lead and silver left in this bit and this is the stuff from lower Sero AO we got about 22.5 lb that we're starting with so at the end we'll see how much Silver's left in that so the first batch and this is the slag from the original Adobe vasos is ready to pour so we're going to Pour It Up see if there's any silver left in that at this point the slag should have cooled you can see a bubbling on top and all the heavy metals would have gone to the bottom of this cone the idea is that those will sink this will stay on top so hopefully we're going to flip this over break off all this slag that's what they did originally and at the very bottom we're going left with a cone of heavy metals kind of like this this is from our previous attempt but that's the idea now we're going to flip that over break it and see if there's any Le silver left in this slag from back in the day from the first one this is all lead and silver you can see that instead of shattering like the slag does this is kind of is malleable like lead and silver so this is lead and silver left this is the double slag and it's much lighter now you know we did a much better job of getting everything else out and so now we're going to weigh this see how much lead and silver it is then take it all the way down to Silver and see how much silver they had left [Music] behind all right so after all that playing around of the slag from lower zoto how much silver did I get out of the slag and how does that compare to what I need to get so we started with 22 lb of slack which is about 10,000 G we're go to grams um I ended up with 11 G of pure silver from that 10,000 G I need 10 oz of silver so about 280 G so I need about 25 times more slag than I had so I need about 650 lb of this slag this waste material to get my 10 oz of pure silver and so when I use Galina up here it's a lot less if I take straight Galina it's probably about 300 lb that I would need to make 10 oz of silver so it's almost twice as much slag that's needed but the slag is just laying on the surface I don't have to go down an elevator I don't have to go 400t underr go through all these little snakes to get it so I think as I kind of keep chipping away I'm going to use the slag and the gleen interchangeably use as much of this as I can go down to the mine when I can because in the end I need 10 ounces and I hope you guys stick around for a future episode cuz I'm making something very very cool with that 10 oz um but this month it was a fun experiment I always like trying to think about how much silver was left behind by the original buan Kings up here um and now we know decent amount of silver is still just lying on the ground up [Music] here when you look around me what do you see you see a lot of water you know this town hasn't had reliable running water ever you know even when it was a Boom Town in the 1860s they were primarily bringing up the Water by mules there's a couple times when they tapped some Springs not too far from from here but those would dry up within a couple years they would always lead to lawsuits like Mark Twain says whisky for drinking and water is sort fighting over and so right now all the water comes up in a military 5ton truck and it gets put into these tanks you see behind me but as this town continues to grow it's going to need a lot more water and a lot better way to get it up and down than just the old military truck and so I've always been pretty hesitant about looking at the water up here as a solution I had her r rumors that it was illegal to collect any rain water in California that turns out to actually not be the case back I think in 2012 they passed a law called the rainwater collection act that allows it if you meet some certain standards with that I started thinking you know I started thinking how can we keep this water here well had our first snow look all this I need to add a gutter to catch some of this water look how much water is is draining down right now but if we go underneath all dry look at that not a drop on the ground but this could solve a lot of issues if we could gather all that all right although the sun is out the snow is coming and so prior to that we're going to do a little experiment we're going to put a gutter up do a little trial run if I put about 20 ft of gutter how much water will that get the next time snow accumulates up there melts down and runs into the gutter so I'm going I cut up the sheet metal put it up there and we're going to get some gutter system going [Music] all right now is time to throw some more water in there make sure it's going the right way this was pretty quick so snow should come in about 2 or 3 days and when that melts we're going to see how much water this square footage could get and if that works I me just look behind me we have serious roofs that we cover and if we cut all of this tank up here if we fed it down in the main town that would kind of allow the pressure to be built up too so let's see how the little test [Music] goes all right gutter is done now we wait not aesthetically the best thing but if this works I think we do some better options first is just figure out about how much water we're going to get when that square footage of roof melts and drains off this is 300 Gall it's totally empty so let's see how much water we can get out of that bring it on snow we're ready all right so here is the update uh the goal to keep all this out of the snow it's a little different now that this much snow is here you look this is probably 8T drift um to the ground I mean I'm stand I can walk onto the roof of our little overhang here now kept some stuff clean but this is where we're at maybe we'll get a lot SN out of this but we got tons of snow up here and it's causing all sorts of issues so the verdict is still out on the whole gutter situation and it's just an experiment the second thing I've been look looking into is something called a atmospheric water generator so basically this is like a thing that pulls water from the air third I've looking into Wells as you guys if you watch the channel have seen I've had a hydrogeologist up here I've also had a water dowser up here which was very uh mixed reviews but exploring different options and so a well is interesting but the well you could drill and end up with nothing but I'm curious you know if you're out there and you have experience with you know rainwater collection if you have experience with atmospheric water generators or Wells I'd love to hear from you um my emails is Brent at zor mines but 2024 top of the list is water and so as I look around right now I can even hear it start to starting to melt and that gets me a little almost anxious knowing how much work we go through to get all this water up here when I see this I just want to capture it to save us some work that's the big update on the water look out for a lot more of this year I'm very serious about this year I think 2024 is the year that s Gord will finally get some [Music] water all right guys today more progress on the hotel as you can see behind me snow has begun and there is just raw sheeting on the roof right now which is no good and it turns out that the roof is going to be a little more complicated to struct than we originally thought but in order to protect this thing through the winter we're going to put something called a storm shield so this is stuff that's made originally for hurricanes and protecting the things from that this is the strongest membrane that we've ever created wow it looks nice today you know the temperature and the weather can change any day down here so we're going go check in with Lorenzo who's doing this and we're going to see what's going on uh well today we're going to continue with the installation and we'll install the flat Parts which is the easiest DS want to do then we're going to give it a shot with the uh torch and make it all nice and tight we'll take care of it sweet love it and overall I got to say I'm very proud of where this building is you know on a typical timeline of a typical construction project this is taken a very long time but this is pretty far from a typical construction project you know when you look up there every single block every single P piece of wood every single nail every single everything had to come 8 mil up this dirt road you know and that's not easy we're already in the middle of nowhere and the fact that all that material had to come up this road is huge you know I think the process of doing that just created so many memories so many people have helped contribute to this hotel it feels like there's already so much history baked into this building that's not even open yet and so for 2024 my main goal is to get this building open you know to have a grand opening party to have all of you guys up I think it's like possible you know the main thing to do right now is to work on the electrical and the plumbing through the winter so that we can have a kind of a head start going into the spring it's not done yet we're have to do a lot but we're getting close to the fun phase and the fun phase is going to be when we can come in here do the finish out you know put down the nice hardwood floors put in certain character pieces that make this feel like an old place put in the bar right here from a Bruns bar from the 1800s you know and kind of just decorate this with everything but the one thing I am still on the hunt for as we move back outside is old wood I have been on the hunt for that beautiful old wood you know that's just the right shade of brown with golden Hues on it to maybe facade some of this outside as we get to that point and I'm not there yet uh I have been on a journey that has taken me through California Nevada you know I took a road trip not too long ago where I was basically just driving down the street trying to find anything that looked like it might work for our old wood I knocked on doors I went into gas stations asking I just was hunting down wood following up on every lead that I could get and we didn't get it yet I thought I got in tonopa had a really good lead from the woman at the gas station that told me so if you're out there and you have any idea where to get some really old Beautiful Brown aged wood that might make this Place blend in let me know I can travel I can get a trail I can come take apart stuff send me any leads cuz I am on the hunt and as we get the electrical and plumbing going I'd love to get all the rest of the materials on site and ready to go for when the winter ends so that way we can maybe hit a summertime open date again that is goal number one for 2024 but that's the American Hotel and that's where we're at at the moment [Music] the start of any new year is a reason to look back on previous ones and when I look back on the last four years here I see the most transformative four years of my adult life you know I came up here looking for something the same way miners were looking for something up here 150 years ago they were looking for silver but I think I was looking for purpose and I found that here which gives me a lot of hope that purpose is always out there no matter where somebody is at life we get to decide what's meaningful for us what makes our hours and days weeks and months feel important and I decided pretty early on of my time here that rebuilding this old town is important and my life changed after that others will look at this old town and can't see why it would be worth spending any time on that's okay you know it makes me happy so I hope that everyone out there that's looking finds their purpose this year you know decides their purpose this year and for those who have it stay on track you know no matter how hard it gets no matter how little sense it might make to anybody else it makes sense to you and you're the one that gets to choose and don't let other people broadcast their negativity onto you you know their unhappiness with their own life whenever you found something that others are looking for there's going to be grumblings but at least you're in the arena you know as Roosevelt said it's not the critic who counts it's the person actually in the arena the person that's out there trying and failing over and over because there's no trying without failing but at least you're striving towards something so don't let the cynics get to you to quote Roosevelt again the poorest way to face life is to face life with a sneer so I hope 2024 is full of lots of purpose and meaning for everyone I just wanted to say thank you all so so much for allowing me to find mine and I hope that we all have an amazing [Music] year I

Channel: Ghost Town Living

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Id: TKi1de9UuB8

Length: 38min 37sec (2317 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2024