The Most Dangerous Mine in Oregon!

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] come up here to a portal I think it's still open this goes back into the North Pole in Colombia vein that's back in this mountain behind me and I'm not sure this history on this one it I think it was put in in the 70s or 80s from a more modern company trying to get back in here to the vein without reopening all the upper tunnels little water seepage yeah this part down here is still covered so at this point I started having some real problems with my mic so well I had just gotten have to fill in the audio here we're looking down the pile that they would have dumped for waste rock and then an up and head here to the left is where they dumped the ore and I think they probably used a front-end loader to load it up into a truck you know what time this whole thing was covered like you see up ahead with the 10 I've had rumours that this operation was done by a max back in the 80s and when the price of gold dropped down to the high 200s low three hundreds that they've dropped the whole project and backed out I've not been able to confirm that but that's what I've been told so here we're kind of walking back towards the portal and like I said this whole thing was covered with ten at one time this metal framework and there he got a good shot of the ventilation pipe and that big gap there and it is where the blower would have been mounted they did have a pretty substantial gate on it at one time and yeah right there's where the blower would have been mounted and this thing's big enough you could drive a Jeep back in there so it was a used actual heavy equipment to drive back in here so the audio was kind of in and out through this part here in a second I'll just let this play with what audio I did get pretty neat framework in here all that cribbing up above the steel beams is kind of interesting boy this metal ventilation tubing has just disintegrated see where they put the netting up with the rock bolts whoo this doesn't look so good definitely not stable rock you can tell where they quit using the the netting up here now you just relied on these Timbers it's totally failed looks fairly solid ill after this stuff came down so you can peek over this see if it's worth going any further very must be back here no airflow to speak of well I don't know if you can see that on camera try and zoom in back there all on camera I don't think but completely collapsed back there these tumors are completely rotten hello it may still go back just checking out how frack popping and cracking back in there so what happened right there as I was standing up on that pile of debris but above me and a little further back in there I kept hearing popping and then a real loud crack so I boogie back and got back under that rock net not that it probably would have done a lot of good but it made me feel better I don't know if it's this old metal just kind of moving around back there or what but it's not reassuring let's put it that way yeah we'll leave it so you can get back in you've got this collapse and if you want to be really brave you could probably go further back in there and investigate but I'm not going to this is a true tailing pile down on the bottom end of the Columbia this was probably after it went through the floatation plant because the mill itself was further up there and then below the mill down just above where I'm at they had a floatation plant somewhere down here looking at the old maps there is a lower tone I don't exactly know where it's at they did punch a tunnel in down low down here somewhere this is part of the Columbia mine just mine had about 50,000 feet of shafts pad it's the main shaft they used was nine hundred and eighteen feet deep and I think it was right in this area somewhere you know you look at the old pictures and the old maps and you think oh I can find that well all those old pictures hit most of the trees cut down around the mill and the mine so this looks totally different now and of course there's been people up here since then this has been logged you know people up here in fact this area right here somebody was up here with an excavator it looks like see the tracks right over here looks like this summer they were up here with an escalator digging around on this tailing pile for some reason I think there's I remember eight 12 different levels this mine there's eight that are totally only accessible by the shaft and then there was at least five added levels and this is one of those minds that are extremely dangerous because these guys they came out right to the surface when they stoped so this might be the shaft right here below me let's go down and take a look yep here's the here's the shaft and this one down 918 feet looks like the caller's pretty well collapsed in but you can see the remnants of the head frame and if I remember this is either a two or four compartment shaft this sure doesn't look open down in there anywhere I'm not gonna go climbing around down in there to find out and see parts of the mill down there a building of some kind this is mine averaged about half ounce per ton according to the records and at 50,000 feet of digging they took out depends on the reports you read anywhere between three and a half million and five million dollars worth of gold at you know twenty bucks an ounce so quite a bit of gold actually gonna wander around up here on this tailing pile and see if I can find out where the ad it was this mine was had fairly extensive work done on you know on multiple levels the deeper they got though if you look at the map the less cross-cutting they did on the vein so we're drifting and if you read some of the reports the upper levels of the mine we're about 40 percent free mill and gold like the deeper they got the molar more sulfide they ran into so became more expensive for them to mine so they you know this thing pretty well shut down in 1916 there was some more work done in the 30s I don't not sure how much it didn't look like a whole lot and it was mainly on the upper levels I don't think they did anything at the lower levels lots of bricks some kind of foundation here this might have been where the hoisting room was and one of the other videos a was over on the north pole part of this mine where there's holes everywhere up here yep looks like a caved in spot I'm not sure what this is this is pretty obvious the shaft was over over where that caller was and say had second one up here but these look more like they've collapsed like they've stoped out below this and these have just sink in which is not a surprise at this mind when we go up above you'll you'll see why I call this the most dangerous mine in Oregon walk along the hillside up here above that shaft here's another claps taupe looks like there's another one right above it too let's go check it out oh these things screaming out I feel like to be the loggers in here cutting these trees down another one right there there's an old building further up the hill what's left of it right in there oh you just really don't want to go walking out in here much I'm gonna go back down below I don't feel like walking over ground I know is hollow underneath me trying to work my way back down to the rig here's a spot where our scope is collapsed there further up the hill there's two more there's some big eyebolts clicked cable all hand-forged it's definitely hand forged eyes on those coming up to a cool what's left of a building roof this is a little cabin powder house or what it was so I'm about a hundred feet higher in elevation now above that shaft collar down there spotted this back in here there's another building down in there take the peak of what this was down right below those trees another huge spot that's collapsed some rail up there looks like an over bin I'm guessing this is probably from the guys that were in here in the 30s I think they did a little bit of development work after the World War two that old stomper see what grounds kind of left off in on itself you really got to watch these old mines where they've stoped below like that you see spots like that you better be paying really close attention now it looks like I'm gonna have to climb out there and figure out what that was the tailing pile comes to collapsed added looks like it might be open back there coming up on the area I've been up in here before a few years ago there's an area right over here that's incredibly dangerous pretty good shot at the quartz veins a little stringer trying to get a process without taking her he took a footfall appears more of the quartz vein and there is no way in God's green earth you could pay me to venture in any of these adits up here a lot of times they would say they they stoped out to the roots you can see right there the roots of the tree hanging down and these guys you know most time I said I bet you they did Stolp up you know a lot of mines they stoped up to where they see tree roots and hey let's stop these guys I swear in places they stoped till they could find the roots of weeds and grass all the way up through this hillside is like this open Stopes I don't know how far down some of these go but they're incredibly dangerous I can't stress that enough that if you ever come at venture up in here watch where you're going this whole North Pole Columbia vein is like this you got to be really really careful where you're headed you can see there's another addict coming in right here you see what's left of the opening and probably met up with this thing or maybe a totally separate one that parallels this and they left a little spot in between to hold the roof up but like I said there is no way you could pay me enough to go crawling around in these adits because they did not leave much material between the levels you could easily go strolling back and just disappear no side of that just gave away and the summer up here it can be a hundred degrees outside and the deer bed down right here and I first time to come up here I couldn't feel why the deer wouldn't leave I came walking from that direction there's a deer laying here and he just would not leave well the air blows up out of this thing and it feels just like an air-conditioner you can sit here and it's like 40 degree air coming out of here and this thing you talk about an open stoke I said I hate walking out on these things because you know it's opened down below yeah you can tell right up there pretty much how much material they left there try and get an angle here step back a little further on this tailing pile you can see the multiple add it's back there see a level there level there last time I was in here you could actually see three of them and it looks like that bottom ones collapsed in enough but you can't see it anymore I don't know how far down that thing goes a long ways I don't know if that cameras gonna picked it up it hit once then you could hear it bouncing on down in there and if you look up the hill right there there's another open Stolp further up there there's more open Stopes again incredibly dangerous up here I'm not exactly sure where that shaft was up here according to the maps it was theirs that an attic going in which I think that was it right there they add it and then right beside it was a about a hundred foot shaft or a little over a hundred feet going down to another level looking at the map I kind of scratched my head why they dug the shaft there doesn't make a lot of sense to me why it was there but obviously they had a reason and there's that add it goes back in it is open try to get a good view of that thing but again it's stoked right up to the surface and there's no way I would go back in these I came in here at one time kind of look this thing over briefly I come back to film it but I doubt whether I'll come back into this mind it's it's just a little out of my comfort zone walking around up here knowing how close to the surface they stoped and not knowing exactly where those Stopes are enough above where I was before there's an open stoped there there's an open stove there open stove right and the cluster of those trees so right in here I'm guessing that's probably about the width of that vein Stoke there and a stove over there so about 60 70 feet across there it looks like there's a huge huge one up there walk up there to it I've never been to that one so we'll see what that looks like it's the scary stuff up in here said there's Stopes you know some of that was dug out right there but you see where the grounds sinking in game trail I come across right below it it's sunk in right above it it's completely open wow this is crazy looking up this hillside roof above those tailing piles there's more of them this whole thing is just mined right to the surface I'll take a big rock and throw down in there close down at an angle and so it tumbled for a long ways down in there here's that quartz just right here where I'm standing it's got to be 15 feet wide just right here it's about where they dug into the edge of this vein nice crystals in there interesting you can see some tempering with a it's stoked up pretty cool pretty dangerous and I'm not so sure the guy's mileage from nineteen when they quit in 1916 had done this we kind of think the guys that came back in the 30s I don't think they D watered the shaft and went down to the lower tunnels I think they came back up and cleaned out what they could from these upper levels that were above water so I think they come in here we got every last little piece they could without dewatering I wonder how big that stoped really is down in there or was the amount of material that's collapsed here and went down in there sure this is a stove or a shaft over here guessing it's a shaft there's a lot of cable laying around maybe this is the level that had the shaft oh man there's another huge opening right above me here look at this first see what this is I'm guessing this was probably the shaft that's on the maps still partly opened down to an added level there that right there is quartz they're going down in and let's go look at this other hole up here above that shaft and this collapsed Oh glory hole it's gotta be about 40 feet across continues up the hillside it will opening down there was kind of open Thomond okay time for a little after-action narration I'm Way up on the mountainside above the main mind looking down into an open stove here and you can see there's a small opening that goes on down and do a tunnel level but what I was trying to point out here was there's a road that comes right across and you can see where they collapsed above the road there too but they cut a little logging road right through the middle of this collapsed oak what we're looking at here is that collapsed opah both the road and while I was standing there I happen to notice that it looked like a added level going in so we'll take a closer look at that and my mic audio finally started working again or as I could see up there that slumped in stuff continues I think there was an added here maybe there's some rail some more rail sticking out of the hillside out our however there the trees been around a while us pretty scarred up it's got a board like it grew around a board is what it looks like I've seen trees go around some things before but never quite like that one right there in the middle you can still see the board poking out that's that's kind of neat this Columbia mine there's a lot of rich history lots of old buildings were here there was lots of there's tons of neat pictures of it but I absolutely do not recommend that you come adventure around this thing it's incredibly dangerous it's the probably the most dangerous mine I've ever ran across and with that I'll leave you with a little bit of drone footage that I took and some historic photos of the mine so if you liked the video give it a thumbs up share it and subscribe and we'll see you on the next one [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] ah [Music] you

Channel: Ham Homestead

Views: 47,060

Rating: 4.7602525 out of 5

Keywords: Danger, Dangerous, Gold, Mine, Stopes, Tunnel, Adit, Shaft, Death

Id: xLE-Umaj7Yw

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 30 2017