Hiking Alone In Death Valley (Looking for Abandoned Mines)

greetings hello my name is brent we are in cerro gordo california right behind me you can see death valley national park and our property here borders death valley which is something that i just don't show that often so that's why this week i'm doing something a little bit different i'm going camping and my hope there is to show you guys a little bit more of the property some of the beautiful sights around here i think so far in the videos i focused on the town core you know the buildings and the main part of cerro gordo but the surrounding land is beautiful and our property itself is 400 acres so it's quite big but it's surrounded by millions and millions acres of blm land it's a bureau of land management so you can come out to a place like this and just hey no one's going to hear you you're dozens of miles from any other human being so i'm going to pack up and do it overnight on the property [Music] over the past week or so i've been exploring google earth so i was just browsing around the property and i found a bunch of different things that i don't know if they're mines or old buildings but they're interested and so my hope this week is to put those into a gps go hiking camp out overnight hopefully find some cool things but if nothing else show you guys some of the beautiful surroundings of cerro gordo so a little bit different this week a little bit calmer but i hope you still like it hopefully still find some things and without any further ado i asked our hiking because the sun is going down all right getting all packed up for the hiking trip i'll take you through what i have so i have a gopro another gopro i'm not bringing the sony camera headlamps extra batteries uh i have an in touch or in reach i mean in case i run into a problem i have a gps to figure out where i'm going off of those things that i saw on google maps so that'll be important i got a knife i got flint to start a little fire because it's freezing cold i have my official cerro gordo flask which they are in the shop if you're interested in them somebody sent me this viewers romney's kendall mint cake it's already expired unfortunately but only by a few days so i'm taking that i'm not even fully sure where that is some other food somebody else sent me these mres or these adventure meals i'm gonna take a couple of those i have a zero degree backpack because it's hovering around 10 to 15 degrees fahrenheit at night plus the wind i have a tent my backpack and my drone because my hope is that i can show you guys a lot more of the property that you can't see typically because it's a beautiful property and there's a lot more here than just the town core so i'm really excited to show you guys oh yeah i have these battery packs i'm not gonna take all these a little overkill and they're kind of heavy and maybe take two of these that i can charge some stuff up but that's it gotta get packed up i'm gonna leave quite early tomorrow probably on six and uh i can't wait to show you guys more of cerro gordo all right time to get out of here oh my god i might have over packed oh man that is heavy what just a casual 28 degrees to start the hike it's only gonna get colder out there i bet tonight it'll be 20 or 15 real cold let's go warm up a little bit it's easy today to think that all of our problems are huge you know when you're constantly connected to your email or social media or facebook or this and that you know every problem seems like the biggest deal in the world but for me as i go out into nature i hike further i sit there i allow myself to kind of get lost and remember my place both in the world and the universe and existence in total it's it's very difficult to see any problems is that big a deal when you look at things from that magnitude and so that's one of the reasons i love getting back into nature and kind of zooming out for myself and you know seeing myself just as a guy on the rock ledge and then seeing the earth from the moon's perspective and the galaxy and then realizing how insignificant i am in the grand scheme of that and if i do find myself getting overwhelmed a little jogging in nature always seems to do the trick all right and we're hiking as you can see on the back side of the property now this is headed towards death valley and that's an area where there's a lot of woodcutter camps you have to imagine all of these mining camps required wood they require charcoal and so there's camps in between the mines where wood cutters would live chop down trees have some charcoal pits and supply the mining towns and so those are areas that are pretty far off any trail of any type i'm hoping when i'm there can find some really cool stuff that nobody has seen in a long time but so far good start very cold very heavy backpack but a little shadow to drink some of this water wow look at this so once you get to this part you can kind of see all the way into death valley sun hasn't hit me yet but it's still warming up a bit it's beautiful out here once you get to that crest look at that the sun's just that peak over there i'll have to walk faster to get there but that's death valley we're headed basically over that peak and then over this ridge line to hopefully find a mine and go from there [Music] there it is there's the sun 20 feet away 10 feet 5 feet ah good morning death valley it's beautiful huh [Music] you know camp out here for a second rearrange my backpack give you guys a view of what this looks like and then we're headed over almost where the sun is headed over that crest and go find some mines [Music] sure enough that is a mine that is a huge tailing pile so we're talking a big mine and it looks like there's more structures over there i remember seeing on google earth and some up there so it's a beautiful day to explore some mines yep that's mine all right still got the tracks and everything bags down time to give it a little bit of a [Music] lookie little around here you obviously got another stone structure here which is awesome seems like it could have been a pretty big night imagine building this look at that that's like a tight corner having used those random rocks still standing 100 years later more than you can say for a lot of houses that they construct these days i grew up in the suburbs and you know there's like cookie cutter homes by somebody like lennar homes or something like that and they all just look the same probably are built to last 20 years or something this guy even a little cubby hole is that where the treasure is i have this theory that miners you have to figure they weren't be out by the bank and so they took their money or their silver hit it somewhere and some of them died it was like a fact of life right some of them hid their silver by a tree died silver's still there so one day i'm gonna come across a whole bunch of silver maybe not today one day what a day oh look at that another little stone structure thing maybe i should just do that tonight built myself a stone house and forget about this heavy tent that i brought this is more like a road see how the cribbing was up here to like create this road oh yeah over to a structure man imagine is recreating this house i mean those views haven't changed ever you know there's a lot of space out there [Music] this old wood what have we got here somebody say oh look we have bed spring i know i'm sleeping right in the tetanus central of [Music] california dang this woods kind of nice tongue and groove take this back yeah hiking back with pottery spots are you seeing what i'm seeing because i am seeing some serious machinery and a lot of cans another tip is if you're looking around a campsite oh there's another thing up there too and look by the roots because you imagine like when this camp was active this tree was tiny and so maybe a guy sat underneath here oh as i'm saying that prince albert can you got anything in oh guys even got the label boom oh come on not even 10 o'clock already got the first find so what i was saying is imagine this is here because this tree used to be really small you know minor guy wants some shade to chill out he threw whatever he was gonna throw here you know over time some dirt covered it so some generations of people didn't find it and then the roots pushed it out so roots could have pushed out bottles you know you can imagine a miner back 100 years ago sitting here drinking some whiskey these trees are much smaller just tossing the whiskey aside right after he smoked his prince alberts and then the roots pushing up the whiskey bottles let's look at these roots let's test the theory right off the bat you know brent you talk a lot but can you deliver i mean there's some cans in there but we're also going to wash so i got double jeopardy or something going on those cans oh that's some type of leather strap pop dang it it's a belt man this place is stuck sardine scan yes sir that's awesome can you think of the guy that opened this to eat some sardines out in the middle of nowhere would think that you know 80 100 years later some guy with a gopro to find him it was awesome [Music] probably not but you know what i appreciate him i appreciate you guys following along got some more tree there's like some type of structure here maybe mine but then the mine that collapsed oh yeah look at this this structure so many cans wow talk about views i believe this is the san lucas mine i've heard that the san lucas is out this way and it really makes sense because this is a big mine and stanley this is a big mine it was active in the same period that cerro gordo was active it's a couple hours to get out here so those mules are moving bringing stuff back into cerro gordo oh not going to step over here because that my friends there's another mine entrance here there getting out step there i am right on top of a mine that gets me excited let's explore this let's explore around we'll do the mines last [Music] wash let's go check out this little building all right took a little brief scavenger hunt around this first mine that i found found the prince already can a couple bottles and i think next up you know i gotta go in the mines it's right there i'll take it safe but what i'm kind of thinking ahead is this mine wasn't a very long walk it was actually quite close and so the next one is probably four or five miles away and this pack it's not going to cut it i uh i over packed for sure and so i have to jettison some of this stuff it's probably 60 or 70 pounds right now and i just can't for cb being getting to the next mine comfortably and so i got to make some decisions on what stays and what goes you know i got a lot of stuff in here the sleeping bag that i'm sitting on obviously has to stay i got a little writing pad i keep that because i want to write some food waters i got a bunch of water water is obviously heavy but i'm not going to jettison that i got these food i need that sunscreen i got red hair so you know sunscreen is very important for me this this is a lot of weight this is my little single person tent but it's probably six or eight pounds so i mean a tent seemed necessary when i was packing but now that i'm out here i could probably find an old mine or fashion a structure in some way you know it is concerning because tonight will probably get down close to zero fahrenheit it was probably 10 degrees last night in town so who knows out here if the wind strikes up i really don't want to have i want to have something to block the wind but oh yeah this charging block is about like equally heavy to this tent i kind of need that because part of the point is to kind of show you guys what it's like out here i don't know the tent might have to stay it seems necessary but [Music] yeah oh all right you know what time it is there's a mine i'm going into it you know what they say don't tempt me with a good mind well another day another mine an exciting night for me because oh wow bill look at this this is so cool so this shows the age of this so these timbers are just like what they called hand humed or something like that basically just like it's a guy who's rudimentary axe making these for the track and you know the newer minds will see the like kind of uh manufactured logs but only these old ones has an old old mine oh man look at that being held up by that look look how they chopped that chop chop chop chop chop well two tracks diverge and abandoned mine and i took neither and that has made all the difference [Music] oh looks like this one ends oh you see that see so anytime you go back it looks like the thing ends and there's like a frame so there's a frame wooden frame that usually indicates the powder room or dynamite so yep dynamite boxes dynamite paper anything got writing on it there you go high explosive giant [Music] giant blasting company gonna be pretty careful because last thing i want to do is step on some dynamite right now and there appears to be a lot of it back here echo that's cool jeans oh wait i was joking but there actually might be jeans holy [ __ ] imagine if i find jeans on this trip [Music] that's denim oh boy look at that folks come on not even a few hours into this expedition when you find denim there's some over there obviously it's not going to be my full pair that i want but that is blue jean that is i was joking and i found it blue jeans look at that bang for your buck not even oh [Music] all right back to the intersection let's take door number two that's pretty a lot of it oh we gotta shoot got an old shoe or shoot so it's weird as a few times recently i've looked at a shoot and i found clothes and oh is that close it's like the miners just throw their clothes on the chute what do you say folks not today not this early in the expedition can't get hurt yet i've got more of sarah gordon to show you oh [Music] got collapse rocks falling through the ceiling and let's go a little further [Music] more collapse oopsies oh we got track over there collapse oh and i dino bite [Music] hey that's it folks we gave it a good run tried our best whoa look at that stoke up there just wasn't meant to be today yeah nah we're just good look at this rock it's just crystals everywhere yellow crystals look at that crystal crystal some really beautiful rocks in this i recently got into a little bit of rock pounding because some guys came up and showed me some different and i'm obsessed with that one careful sounds like blue green whoa look how blue that is i'm gonna keep that anybody out there know that is azerite to guess but look at that rock just when i think i didn't find anything in this mind any mind explanations a successful minor exploration when you leave in this mind when you walk out of this come on oh that's beautiful you know it's beautiful this blue rock i got let me keep that good luck rock you know as much as i like this prince albert can i found i think what i'm going to do is write a little note off the time capsule idea put it in there put it somewhere safe from the elements because obviously it's not waterproof but maybe the next excited guy's gonna come out here and find this and open it up and get a little note from me so i'm gonna do that pack up and hit the road headed back in briefly to hide this in a undisclosed location and then we will be on our way bag is packed but controversial decision one i might regret goodbye tent i will come for you soon the other big theme for me when i'm out in nature is just self-reliance right it's something that you know sometimes when you go somewhere you're like well i need to have this i need to have that everything needs to be perfect and it's like no come on man you're gonna survive you're a human being human beings are very capable beings you know if you just allow yourself to be and so i remember on this trek when i couldn't bring my tent even it was like whoa what if i don't have my tent and there's a scorpion gets into my sleeping bag and it's like come on man how many millions of people have slept on the ground before you're gonna be just fine and you figure things out and that builds confidence you know the next time you're in a situation that's uncomfortable you remind yourself that hey i figured this out last time i didn't figure this out this time and so for me that's why i like going on these types of trips that's why i even enjoy getting a little bit lost it's just pushing the comfort zone to build that you know almost like calloused hand that that comfort that hey next time i'm in something like this i'm the type of person that figures it out if you don't test your boundaries if you don't try different things and do get metaphorically lost occasionally you're never going to build that [Music] i up look how beautiful this is as we're going around this turn sun is just hitting this tree and that could be a postcard look at this we are way up here in a little roundabout way we'll look down a little bit tell me that's not a stone cabin that's so cool i had no idea there's stuff over here and it's so beautiful right now with the sun the way it is oh yeah no we're not going in that today i don't even want to get in here with my backpack i could flip on one in there holy cow whoa look at that so i kind of recognized that ridge way down there last time i was walking up there i found this piece of a beer bottle maybe there and i kept saying oh i could walk i wish i could walk up the wash now if i keep hugging this top i'm going to go down to wherever that washer is coming from look at this we're way out here but a happy birthday balloon this is the second one of these that i found and we're probably at least 20 miles from any town and 40 miles from any real town so do not let your happy birthday balloons go in the air they end up places like this i think everybody has their pet peeve and littering is mine so now i get to walk down this washerways and you know me you know i love walking in the wash by wash i mean where the snow would melt and wash things down almost like a dry riverbed it kind of scoops things from a lot of different camps and puts them in here out here the most predominant trees are the pinion pines and the juniper tree i always thought if you could make a cereal gin and use some of the berries from around here i don't know anything about making gym look at there there you go juniper berries you know how to make gin and you want to help make sarah go to the gym hit me up because i am interested i said earlier that this area is the area for wood cutters you can kind of see here that there's a flat thing at some point maybe even a structure if you look just underneath there's all this charcoal so this is a charcoal pit that's not from a campfire that's from the guys back here the woodcutter supplying the camp from charcoal it's not not steep you know it's not in the best shape but i'm not in the worst shape and thinking about like scaling up the side of the mountain getting back up there come on the top of another mountain there's a reference point back up and over i can imagine just guys back you know 100 years ago just i mean the sun looked like this there's now there's buildings here so they took a very similar walk back then theirs wasn't for leisure because they're living but cut down tree right there probably some charcoal that went into making some silver at cerro gordo so that's important to me even that stump is important to me that stump has history and it's kind of related to serogordo an old stump that was something else got to the peak look it's a different structure and i think if you look right across that's the mind i'm looking for i am pumped that that is the mine because i didn't know if i can get there before dark and i have plenty of time to go over there i think my camp out by the mine so at least i know where i am or if that's not the mind i'm looking for that's at least a mine for sure so almost there yes that's awesome i thought i was gonna have to like camp on the side of a mountain under a tree and get eaten by a bobcat and hit by a rattlesnake not today well it's not saying not today yet it's not as close as it looks that might be the prettiest tree i've ever seen look at this thing back in this alley man what a beautiful tree it's like haunting too wow huh it came from many peaks over that way oh i got kind of found a shelter now make a shelter and then uh we'll be doing all right try to find the interest of these mines too oh man my my legs are cramping up right there oh putting in the work today let's find some shelter and eat some food look at that [Music] that's what i'm talking about man that's even like a fireplace or something all right this is pretty good i mean i have to do some workouts to clean out the wood and i don't know my gloves with me i'm gonna take a little quick walk about see if i can find any better stuff the cabin over here obviously not ah there's no walls or anything i'm not seeing many of those stone caps oh hello always right behind you all right so see with this i could just uh kind of move out some rock put it there all right so as you can see what i'm trying to do here is create a small space as possible for my bed i'm gonna create a little rim with these rocks almost like a little tomb i'll put some i gotta find some stuff to put down first maybe some leaves or even the pine stuff pine straw down underneath that then i'll put a layer then i'll put a layer on top of that and this will be my home tonight all right it's not perfect but i'm racing at the sun so it's better than nothing down now i'm gonna put on this to insulate it against the ground then a sleeping bag that's something over top and that's gonna be home tonight will it work i mean let's hope so sun's going down i'm gonna make a little fire pit over there and so stay warm jump in this put the i have another emergency blanket i'll put on top and that'll uh that'll be it tonight well you know i started to feel good got my little fire going keeping it pretty small got my bed pretty much set up over there and i was excited to try one of these mres that somebody sent me and the last mre i had it heated itself this it just it said on the front just add water the caveat there is add boiling water well i don't have much of a way to boil this i don't really want to find an old tin around here and use that you know it just wouldn't be a ghost town living episode without some minor catastrophe so i guess this lasagna meat sauce is gonna have to wait well i can try to eat it cold where it says to absorb it dang it oh man i was really looking forward to that too this is looking to be dinner it's me jerking apple in a protein bar but i gotta say for not having a tent got a little house now with enough time here i'd put a whole roof over this some sheet metal a little chimney as you can see i decided to further upgrade my sleeping arrangements by putting this wood i found over them making it very much like a coffin i did that because i was walking over there and there was a pretty large scat and i thought i heard a big animal now is that wood going to prevent an animal that wants to kill me from killing me no but i might slow it down a little bit and i think if i keep putting some wood it will provide a little bit of insulation too so basically building a coffin you ever have those moments where you're like man how'd i get here and i don't just mean like you know miles from any town camping by myself but more like you know growing up i remember the first thing i ever wanted to be was a inventor and it's probably like a lot of kids right i was like i want to be an inventor and i would spend my afternoons in my garage like taking apart radios and then as i got a little older i wanted to start something you know so i was always starting like a leaf-raking company or this company and then growing up both my parents were teachers so education was fairly important so i always thought about going to higher education so it's either you know doctor lawyer or banker you know those would kind of seem to be the three most obvious choices after you know the dream of being an inventor went away and so i didn't like blood so uh medical school was out i didn't think that i was a great public speaker so lawyer was out plus i just didn't enjoy it so chose banking and i went to new york city to get a graduate degree in finance to work at an investment bank because i remember this was you know 2011. that's what people said was cool you know i remember investment banking was like the cool thing to do i remember there's a song on youtube that was like damn it feels good to be a banker and it was all about the glorification of investment banking and long hours and the guy in it is like shotgunning a red bull and i was like glorified that you know you would do this make all this money and have a great life and i bought into it you know that's what society said was right so i bought into it went to finance went to grad school for finance spent a lot of money borrowed a lot of money i should say to go graduated got in a job at an investment bank uh i worked there for less than one month i absolutely hated it you know no disrespect to bankers out there but uh it wasn't for me so i quit i ended up traveling a lot i traveled backpack through central and south america and i kind of just reshaped how i viewed the world you know as you meet lots of different people you see there's lots of ways to kind of get by and it doesn't have to be one of those three doctor lawyer banker routes and so i remember i came back and my only goal is not to work at a bank and so i moved really deep into brooklyn way past bed-stuy almost like brownsville if you're familiar with brooklyn and i was renting a room for 400 a month barely making rent basically just doing whatever i could to not have to get a real job and then i started this backpacker hostel in brooklyn and so it was this commercial space that you put in bunk beds i'd stayed at tons of hostels when i was traveling you know and so i really missed that camaraderie and that excitement of being in there meeting people from all over the world and so i started a hostel in brooklyn i didn't get any of the necessary permits i just got a commercial building put a bunch of bunk beds in there and that became three of the best years of my life it was fun i was making money i was mortised being able to live for free in new york city and i knew that that was going to end it was kind of like there was a ticking clock there right you can only have an illegal hostile brooklyn for so long and so i started working with some other people and started doing some other things got into book marketing that brought me to austin where i ended up starting a backpacker hostel as well i thought i had shaken it but i remember i went to austin i was walking on the street one day down cesar chavez if you're familiar with austin and on the right there's this beautiful blue building that was a victorian mansion and i remember just thinking dang that would be an amazing hospital and it wasn't for sale or anything at the time and so i went on my way and then i remember walking by a couple weeks later and there was a for sale sign or for lease signed in the art and that was a literal metaphorical sign that hey maybe i'm not doing this hostile thing yet so i ended up leasing that starting a legit hostel in austin and ran that for two or three years and i was getting bored you know it's like there's only so much things you can do at the hospital there's only so many beds you can put in each room and so i was looking for a bigger project and i was looking in the catskill area actually just upstate of new york my friend john beer i ended up buying sarah gordo with and we were taking these trips up there just discussing hospitality and stuff and then my friend aaron texted me this link to buy a ghost town and so he texted it to me at like two o'clock in the morning almost as a joke he was like hey look at this isn't this funny and i was just obsessed you know that was that was it i thought wow and i read about the history and the area and everything and just yeah my life's never been the same you know it's one of those things that had i stuck with my job as a banker i wouldn't be happy i might have made a lot more money but want to be doing stuff like this you know and so i don't know i just think it was a very difficult decision to make to walk away from the investment banking thing and there was many years where this didn't seem like the right idea i wasn't making any money i was kind of living in pretty deep into brooklyn but it led to this and you know i don't think it's my place to be preachy or anything like that but i think a lot of people are faced with that all the time they're faced with the decision of hey is this the safe route is this the thing that i want to do and i bet the answer is no to a lot of people particularly if you're young you know like if you're under 30 you don't like what you're doing you know you're only you're not going to get a rerun quit move deep into brooklyn write articles for odesk figure something else out you never know where it's going to go but you do know you do know where that investment banking path goes it leads to making money and being miserable and just not having a good life so i don't know i think times like this remind me of those times i try to think of myself like hey what if i had stuck up the investment making thing and i can't even think about that now you know it's just not something that's even in the realm of possibility anymore i'm really grateful for it you know and i thanksgiving was just you know two days ago and so i've been sitting here looking at the sunset behind me just kind of being grateful for everything that's come along in my life and the opportunity to share with a lot of people and so you know i hope you if you're debating doing that thing you do it you know who cares you know if you want anybody to give you a thumbs up i'm giving you the thumbs up you know not that i you know matter in any way but i hope you do it i hope i continue to do it i hope it leads me into beautiful paths that connect in beautiful ways all right fire has been put out especially time to go to bed [Music] just gotta check the old sleeping bag for scorpions it's longer than 153 i'm going to bed inside the tomb guess it's time to go to bed good night well good morning let's try to get out of this tune without collapsing it it collapsed [Music] look at that to wake up to oh wow i gotta get out of here stupid stupid thing i felt it too good [Music] oh yeah that's a shot lacing up for another day come on look at that [Music] wow it's time to get back now almost all of my cameras are dead uh this is the last one left so i'm going to give myself the treat of walking back without worrying about filming or anything like that but i thank you guys as always for checking out this video it does mean a lot to me i think my next excursion related to this has got to be on a dirt bike i saw that trail and it just something triggered so i'm going to be experimenting around the dirt bike hopefully that opens up all sorts of new explorations and minds to check out but for this week that's it that's all goodbye i hope you guys have a good week and thank you guys as always for checking this out aha home sweet home i'm almost there oh boy i'm ready you

Channel: Ghost Town Living

Views: 489,798

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Id: szrnV8RwxcI

Length: 46min 47sec (2807 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020