5 MORE Levels of Cerro Gordo's Union Mine?

hello there my name is Brent and this is the union mine here at Cerro Gordo and back in the 1800s this mine this Chef was the largest producer of silver for the State of California over 500 million dollars the minerals came out of this hole there's over 30 miles of mine off of this main shaft right here so typically when I go out in this mine I take this cage 900 feet straight down this week I'll be taking rope the very bottom to hopefully get into levels seemingly forgotten to time it is going to be quite the adventure so let's get into it thank you [Music] all right so my initial mission in this adventure was to repel to rope down 900 feet that is the entirety of the Union mine and the union mine is by far the biggest mine here at Cerro Gordo and off of that 900 feet branch is close to 30 miles of Mines that just honeycomb everywhere underneath this town and for the past three years every single time I've gone into the Union mine I have used the Hoist so I have used a cage that dangles off of a cable that has to get lowered down by a whole crew of people it takes three or four guys to dedicate their afternoon to send a cage down the people that are able to operate the Hoist have dwindled some of my friends have moved farther away some have changed locations and at this point I don't really have a crew that consistently send me down into the mine so that means I am blocked from entering what is pretty much my favorite place here under a month ago and Robert Sloan came to town and Robert is a historian a hobby any kind of a trade that for the last few years has been researching cereal girl from afar and when he came here he presented all sorts of new things it seems that there's potentially four levels below the 900 foot level looking at the maps and researching it more it would seem that one of these levels in maybe the first level off of the 900 foot level would be at an 11 30 level which would indicate a drop of 230 feet so that would potentially my mind think was there a second hoist down there at some point was there a whole many miles of Mines that have just been lost not really talked about it's just such an important part of the history here nobody alive has been into them and it's just this mystery that is just too good to give up you know it's just enough to prompt me to order 950 feet of rope and to think about ways to get to these levels all right I'm heading down the hill very excited that is 950 feet of rope many of you have always asked why don't you just use the ladder the ladder's broken for like 20 foot stretches so that's not a good idea some of you have asked why don't you repel [Music] foot hole imagine a 90 story building imagine putting on a rope and a harness and then just looking over the edge of a 90-story building and then just slowly letting yourself down the side of it I think over the times here I got a little bit more comfortable with ropes you know I roped down a 300 foot shaft that had nothing to put your feet onto and you're just dangling on a void I broke down the Jefferson chimney the main ore body here I've gone at least 700 feet down that on ropes going on Old sketchy Ledges around old ladders that are really dangerous and so my repulsion to the idea of repelling 900 feet has eased let's say over the last three years tomorrow Rock Blaster to help me get past some potential collapses stay tuned all right there it is there's the Rope this is key to our adventure I'm not gonna open it down here but this is 950 feet of static rope and I just dropped off this this is our Blaster let's take it inside Keeler property check it out now obviously Dynamite you cannot have unless you have a blasting license you spell rock blasters seems like just underneath that uh that gray area so to speak and they are designed to break big rocks at construction sites and essentially they were like dynamite did back in the day you know I've known I've gotten to collapses where big rocks have fallen they're too big for me to move but if I were to blow up these rocks be able to move them then potentially I could get to areas that had never gotten to before and we have the micro blaster in addition to that we have explosives this is what's going to get us into the lower below 900 level is these little capsules here and this bad boy when you put one of these at the end boom [Music] it's awesome [Music] all right the time has come to send this rope down this hole so again I'll get a light this time and get a little idea I'm gonna try to run it down this ladder so the ladder does go down a long ways but it's broken in many spots there's 10 foot sections that are out and if you look up I would want it then directly centered which there's nothing great to tie off to this is nailed in or so move this Bucket over just got away 300 400 pounds now I know people are going to freak out about a removable pile point but I've tied off the sagebrush before so this is an improvement over that [Music] the main thing that I was concerned about was just the amount of gear that I was going to bring down and I needed more rope the day before I started thinking more about The Descent so I decided to do a little trial run and on this trial run I learned 950 feet of rope is very heavy and so the type of descender that I have kind of coils the Rope through it in order to allow it to create you know friction and to slow you down as you're going down but to do that it needs a loose end it can't be extremely tight rope and so the center I had would not allow me to descend down with so much rope weight below me and so after a little bit of thinking I realized that I was gonna need a few spans of room and so I went down to Lone Pine got another 200 feet of rope and so with that I started kind of piling everything together [Music] this morning I am taking the first descent down to the 900 level and I'm a little bit nervous just because the amount of gear that I have to bring I'm bringing down multiple ropes to hopefully bring me further down the Rope where the Rope weight won't be a problem which means I don't have to tie off at different points I also have to bring the rock Blaster to potentially break up any Rock get past the collapse to get down to these two lower mythical levels that we have to get to the problem is over here if you look is that some of these areas down this shaft get very tight and so this is going to have to be going below me obviously have to bring a bunch of water gear you know light stuff like that so momentarily put on this harness and down the hole I said this is the stuff that'll be below me oh you can see it's right like that so we have Rock drill another 200 feet of rope Rock Blaster below that hopefully going below me down the hole and uh all righty oh man right my best thank you foreign and so I started down and I would stay very quickly I realized the claustrophobia that would haunt me a little bit later on oh that's terrifying yeah I'm just a nice tight spot there's one more about 10 minutes away so I might radio once I get past that yeah yeah all right that's up good Arrow oh gross foreign six oh no and down so 820 feet to go that's crazy I can't get through so I'm trying to figure out a way through this tight spot yep what am I doing here the very first box I got to wasn't one of the narrowest ones immediately my shoulders were as compressed by how small this box was when your shoulders being compressed you're on a rope with 900 feet below you was terrifying but it was also invigorating at the same time all right so just below the 86 is too tight to get through here so I have to go back and the main shaft it's scary but that's I think the only way past this tight spot which hopefully then I can swing back to the ladder afterwards but this is too tight in here let's go out there all right next check-in we are at the 200 level you can see it's all boarded up and that's already snuck in above it so the view up looking longer 200 feet down 700 feet to go the Rope weight on this is still way too much for the center to work right so I think once I get to the end of this rope I have to find someone else to tie off to with this rope in the bag below me and I keep going down and hope that this is good to go back up come on and so as I was making my way down I was finally able to relax a little bit right around when I came to the end of my first 200 foot rope I had the rest of the Rope dangling a row back below me that I needed somehow secure something safe I needed to then lower down my next rope then I need to transfer from the Rope I was on to the other rope and during all the kind of confusion over what to hook into what not to hook into I ended up dropping my rock blaster all right so I am changed over to the next rope a rope change mid descent is never very fun but uh we're probably about I don't know 300 feet down now maybe 250 so too much weight on that cord don't go to the end of this next one I unfortunately in the transition there I lost a rock drill or no I lost the power blaster I have the doctoral so I'm hoping that's still in decent shape when we get down there hard work you know this thing that I was so excited about you know that I dropped before I even got to the very bottom it was just hilarious and annoying at the same time all right we're getting down there I'm probably about 500 feet down and I'm onto the last green rope it's hard going right now because the ropeway below me is still a lot my uh head Mount GoPro ran out of batteries so I'm hoping that this design goes smoothly with this thing it's a lot of pressure on this descender right now but as you can see still a lot to go but we've come a long ways you know at first I was using the ladder a decent amount and then I realized ladder was just kind of slowing me down then I kind of got to like sending pretty good then I felt like excited so I found myself just getting a little bit more loose with how fast I was descending you know I was really kind of going along and the only time that would really stop is when I would see pieces of things that I dropped thank you by the end I was having a blast I said I was having just like this fully free and enjoyable time is going down just with the highest expectations of everything to come you know with the idea that who knows you know that unknown exploration feel that just I don't know always supposed to be in the best mood foreign [Music] folks I've made it to the bottom 900 feet down on rope and it looks to me like our blaster let's check it out may still be operational and once again welcome back to the 900 foot level whoa all right folks we did it we are down 900 feet into the user goes Union mine only by using rope was terrified to do it but we got down here and it looks like most of our gear is intact now again I've been in the 900 before yes we're gonna look around we're gonna see some things but really what we're after is new history and that new history would be two new levels in 11 30 and a 12 50 level below the 900. nobody since this money shutdown has been down to these lower levels they're just an anomaly there's lots of lore around them there's few facts but that's what we're down here for that's what we just spent three hours eating on this rope to do so let me drink a little water collect myself let's go find some new history so luckily when I got to the bottom I had pretty clear instructions on where to go Robert who had shown me the maps originally had given me like Street directions basically to exactly where this connection to a lower level should be all right let's go find this lower level so now we gotta go this way and we should go about 140 feet before we hit across intersection running perpendicular from this main tunnel it's the four-way intersection exactly as described so through this we should have to go 290 feet more that way before getting to another three-way intersection but you can see this moisture is here so there's the potential that we need to go 290 feet this way and as we went back this way something I put here long ago it's still here that is a one million subscriber plaque from YouTube it's still looking in very good shape it's got some cool crystallization going on so I still need to go probably another 250 feet this way and we're looking for a three-way intersection the tunnel headed to the right oh boy here we go so we're probably 100 feet back really just collapse that's why I said I can't go over this collapse oh maybe I cannot go over this collapse and this type of dirt these Rock Blaster isn't going to help very much with this type of dirt is like clay I wonder I see a little hole I am going to peek up there but at this point we need another probably hundred and ninety feet probably almost 200 feet more before we would get to the intersection that would lead us to the lower levels so I am going to go up there now again this class can only be five feet deep so we dig through into there but I was hoping to get a lot further than this before reaching a intersection like this so this is just Manpower this is just digging and digging but let's scoot up here [Music] oh so slippery can't even get grip to get up there the problem right now is I'm just slipping and sliding on this but a lot of times with these collapses they're only 10 feet so you can get up and over them and continue on so we're gonna keep trying that but again I probably have 200 feet to go before I get to this intersection that would have led to the winds to the lower levels so if it's 200 feet of this clay not gonna be very possible The Blasters can help much given this mini a shovel and it's a lot of time you know I do have a bed at the 700 foot level um where I could camp out tonight I'd be down to even sleep down here for four or five days and just dig all day long to see how long it would take me to get through this collapse but before we think up through all that let's try to get up and over this thing and then there's one other way that potentially LED back to it the other way out of the cage we'll go check that out yeah come on looking pretty collapsed does he take a lot of digging you know we need 200 more feet to get through but this could be 10 feet this collapse this claps could be 200 feet and we know we know we need to go 200 feet to get to where the cage was down I just think if it was descending 230 feet down there could be 2 tons of Machinery over there I mean just stuff that no one even knew about and just history obviously that was disappointing you know I was hoping that it was going to be a few blasts I was going to pass I was going to find a whole new hoist system maybe I was gonna find remules and wants to stay down in the 900 foot level and the wet Rock was like a wet towel on my adventure so right now we're headed north off that first intersection we got to so paste it on the way going back to but this one is the winds up there I think that's where we have one of the diesel Brothers I wonder if that's potentially a different way in that same area that seems like it's leading back that way so obviously it's getting much more collapsed further we go like this way The Rock in this level can be very much like clay and again with shovels dig this out dead end so far not seeing a lot of hard rock but it makes sense to blow up to get out of the way it's it says clay that I don't think that the Blaster would have tons of success getting any quicker through this could potentially lead that same way oh okay foreign [Music] fun level though right here is this intersection we're gonna cross over to the map upstairs we're now going this way and it says this way out which I don't know that I believe go this way it appeared off to the right another wins down that potentially got to another level this way I remember being very collapsed to the right I remember them back feeling it quite heavy now this would be straight off and back the shaft regular ceilings thank you you can see they're using some big Timbers here ah so again passable time but just they're obviously concerned about something and that's what they're concerned about how much collapse now in this section there's a lot of dynamite as you can tell right there possibly more where I'm standing [Music] there it seems to be classed as well I mean look at that so I'm 900 feet down here and something's been a game changer whether I'm on a mine exploration like this or up in the town has just been element I bring this stuff pretty much everywhere it's just potassium magnesium sodium it's a very easy to use electrolyte supplement they've been a huge supporter of the town over the last few years and I just love it if you want to try this out they're giving everybody watching a free eight sample pack all you have to do is go to drinkelement.com Brent so drink lmnt.com b-r-e-n-t and they're gonna give you a free sample pack with any purchase if you don't like it send it back no questions asked I can give you a refund but it's been huge for me that you can help a lot a lot of you guys and uh hope you give it a shot we're back to the Hoist my blaster my rock drill and all that a few things one I was able to get down here with rope only which is very very very cool you know I've been afraid of how you experience your whole life so to be dangling with a 900 foot of exposure below you something that I'm just proud that I made it down here two it seems that the way that the hoists were to go to these lower lower levels has about 170 feet behind the collapse I know that the Blaster that I brought down is not going to do tons of good given the type of rock that's back there you know this needs to be dug out by shovels um I think I can send some shovels down by some string potentially my plan was to stay down here for as long as it took to get through that collapse just blasting away and moving rock now seeing that as more of a clay substance I need to alter my strategy a little bit but I think the main thing that's accomplished in this route was just the fact that it can be done that I can get down here by rope that's huge that is going to open up so many opportunities long term but with that I think today I'm gonna pack up drink some more water head back up and regroup foreign this hole is too narrow to get through so as we continue going up it's going to be too narrow to get through so to climb on the outside but the ropes on the inside so I am gonna have to switch ropes which I didn't want to do oh [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] and just thinking this isn't it this isn't the end of this exploration obviously there's been a lot of dead ends at Cerro Gordo over the last few years for the longest time I ran into a dead end with the cement trucks coming from the hole to pour the cement until Dave Sparks came and proved it was possible we've had the road flood and get washed out that could have been the dead end of the progress of the hotel for the year we didn't let that make it a dead end and so I think that there's always this conscient tension between dead ends and progress and as times progressed here it's been harder to make progress because I've reached more dead ends but I think that time and time again I've proven that pushing past those dead ends has led to something amazing has led to the continuation of this journey that has been Cyril Gordo it just builds your confidence and your self-esteem that pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone is something that I've been thinking about a lot recently right now my plan as a stands is to go down there clear a big area for base camp figure out the logistics of sending a lot of supplies down there I'm thinking supplies to exist for three or four days you know cots canned goods water can we run electricity down there can we run a hard communication lines you know this isn't the end of the 900 foot exploration this is actually just the beginning of it and so right now obviously I'm Mighty on a pretty good high of what we're going to do next but I think before I go down there again which I hope to do in the next day or two I'm gonna check on with Robert you know Robert is a story and send me down there to begin with with the idea of the four levels I'll go over the findings that we have so far and hopefully develop a plan of where we're going to go from there hey Robert how's it going uh hey Brent it's going pretty good how about you pretty good um I wanted to kind of cut right to the Chase and update you on the the 900 level expert mission that I just went on yeah I heard uh I heard you you had a little trip and I was excited to get that update you know we'd identified this as the access route route to get to it yep but I had missed something and I want to show you that because I think it's um a big deal uh yeah right here they actually uh have it detailed well it appears up to the 700 from the 900. with this maybe I'm an extra down I stopped by the 700 first and then go and see if there's something in a vicinity that would have led down I mean I I get that drawings simplify life but you should have a basically a you know a vertical shaft uh 200 feet that you should be able to go down and reach the 900 from the 700 which is pretty cool you actually see a stagger here so it looks like I get back over here uh it looks like maybe there's a stagger below these layers but it goes down to this uh that's red this red layer that's much larger that was uh it appears to be more fully developed uh during the the Gordon times the Gordon ERA this idea of getting to these lower levels is just consuming me at this point and so the knowledge that Robert passed on that the 700 potentially leads to the 900 then down to the 1100 is huge you know I've been in that level so many times that if there is a vertical shaft it's going to be behind some collapse you know my biggest concern right now is getting all the supplies down there if we're not using the Hoist if we're not using this thing behind me then everything that goes down there needs to go down on a rope and obviously it's going to be a very heavy load so I'm thinking that I need to utilize existing materials down there whether that's wood to potentially build shelves beds things like that but no matter what we're going to find some new areas and we're gonna make some more history all right I'm back up here in the Hoist house ready to go back down the hole and I kind of like the system we got going on you know I'm going down and actively keeping track of everything I see in a much better way than I did before coming back up I send it off to Robert or maybe some other historians he sends me back info that he's found out since the last time I went down you know in between me going down last time and going back down we now know that there's five levels below the 900 foot level there's not just two there's not just one there's actually five and this was found in a investor prospectus that Robert found so I'm gonna get changed head down there and we're gonna see what we can find and we're gonna see what future holds all right made out of the 700 foot level and again it's gonna be the first stop we're gonna go back here I'm gonna try to see if I can find that connection from the 700 to the 900 that Robert pointed out in the prospectus we were headed back that way in search of hopefully an easier way down then we continue down that could have been that left-hand turn that we were looking for over here or potentially if you go back here this is an ore shoot that means they're obviously mining above it [Music] and this should have gone below too this could be the way down but not today I have a feeling that this is it or this is the way that they used to get lower because these shoots would indicate going above and you could see him just bringing it all the way down but again go down here take this out who knows what that could lead to you could tell that there was some serious timbering here there's been this Cloud so it's a massive rocks and this one for instance over here I wonder if this was the way down as well or this was the way down these aren't moving well the rock blaster or something this is where the rock Blaster could come in handy break those up this might just be more digging well it doesn't look like we're getting down to the nine from the 700. I think for now we're gonna go back to the nine take a peeker out again start kind of clearing the area that's going to be the base camp for our kind of Big Adventures foreign [Music] [Music] first I wanted to 3D map part of mine I think they gained the dimensions and comparing to those that we are operating with will be important you know the USGS did a report in the 60s on Cerro Gordo and it is kind of the Bible so to speak for the union mind and it has a scale on it but I've always wondered how accurate that scale was and so I want to go down there with polycam which is using lidar information to kind of capture the dimensions as we go to compare that to the scale that they have from the USGS to make sure that when we say we have to dig through 50 feet of collapse to get to this next area that it's actually 50 feet doesn't end up being you know 500 feet or something like that I'm going to do a quick 3D map from this intersection to the next intersection so we have some Dimensions to determine whether the dimensions that we're using of Google Earth are working so with that let's get back into it [Music] [Music] this is gonna be base camp all it needs to get cleared out figure out what what is usable what word isn't I was trying to make a room that was flat my clearing of the debris ended when I moved one log and just this huge 12 by 12 beam just landed on my shoulder and immediately I just thought myself clenching up trying to essentially like squat this heavy beam that didn't happen so I moved out of the way um I think it could have hit me in the head it could have been a lot worse um but after that I realized hey you know I think I've cleared what I can clear it on my own these 12 by 12 10 foot long Timbers you're gonna need some help when I get down there all right so as I started clearing what will become base camp you know this is where I'm going to create some beds here we're gonna do some shelving we're gonna live down here for days really I'm gonna get to that in a little bit but I found some cool stuff I found this which I never seen before it is a uh maybe between little cigars between or something little cigars it might be a cigar still in here oh wow says uh Mr smoker I'm smoking between the ax don't draw hard just puff lightly then you'll enjoy to the fullest the extent the mildness and fragrance of these little cigars the tween acts is the name of those Cigar Company but there does appear to be a little bit of tobacco's still in there and that's really cool so that was in there 900 level use phone when in trouble ring one long ring to the mine engineer don't use Bell unless phone won't ring that is awesome yeah that was just under a lot of debris over there so I'm Gonna Keep clearing a little bit but some pretty cool finds already just in the rubble oh yeah when I found this stuff I found this too which is one of the highest quality pieces of green I've seen you can tell by how close those crystals are that's a lot of silver content so they're pulling some really good stuff out here I might they take this up actually and assay it so you can get an idea of how just how fine the quality is coming out here but that was one of the best pieces I've ever seen all right that's this week I have gotten to the point where I need some help moving movie numbers a camp here where a few people can come down we can spend the time needed to get into these lower levels five of them we know now know as well as map this level with using polycam and Stitch it all together so I want to create a space where it's gonna be possible to live down here you know for a few days to do that to how many a team so if you have any recommendations on who I should bring down here um then you can be very experienced with minds they need to be very experienced with rope and very experienced and just generally chaotic settings Plus have the desire to dig through a bunch of collapses it feels like every week up here recently we've been discovering more and more history and every trip down here I find something new and hopefully preserve something for future generations to look back on too I think if we can give these lower five levels it's going to unlock all sorts of information we didn't know about this mine before but with that I'm signing out thank you guys as always for checking out these videos I hope to see you on the next adventure if you have any recognitions who to bring down here let me know I'm gonna drink some more water some element and we're climbing 900 feet back up till next time see you guys thank you all so so much for watching this video

Channel: Ghost Town Living

Views: 62,098

Keywords: Ghost Town Living, Union Mine, Daring Descent, Exploration, Forbidden Realm, Underground Adventure, Rappelling, Historical Exploration, Mine Exploration, Hidden Depths, Thrilling Adventure, Uncharted Territory, Deep Into The Mine, History Unveiled, Brave Explorers, Ghost Town Explorers

Id: Pm2igmKNd6w

Length: 39min 29sec (2369 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 16 2023