Exploring The Abandoned Lost Horse Mine TVR Exploring 2026-09-20 | Exploring The Abandoned Lost Horse Mine
Pushing Into Unexplored Areas Of A Large Abandoned Mine Complex - Final TVR Exploring 2024-05-15 | Well, we ran this one out as much as we could… It was our hope to be able to connect to some of the other large mines in the district as the old maps show the entire complex of mines connecting underground. However, all of the connections were regrettably caved. Nevertheless, this unexplored section of the mine was quite enjoyable and to obtain the footage that you saw in this series required an entire day of exploring. So, it was a good day and a good trip. As a reminder, this abandoned mine dates back to the 1800s and silver, lead, copper and zinc ore was pulled out of this complex... *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LSeveral kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Pushing Into Unexplored Areas Of A Large Abandoned Mine Complex - Part 3 TVR Exploring 2024-05-08 | In this video, we run out this great, unexplored level and start on the next level down, which turned out to be just as rewarding… The unexplored section of this mine definitely earned it a spot on my “Favorite Abandoned Mines” list. Given how damp and humid this mine was, I am very grateful that so many artifacts were preserved as well as they were. Most of the wood was a mess, but metal, paper, glass, carbide graffiti, etc. was fairly intact. I suppose I’m used to our mines in the Sierras where many adits are almost fully submerged for months at a time and never dry out completely (the water level just drops a bit) and many have thick layers of mud over everything.The next video will be the last one from this visit and will be a bit longer in order to cover the whole level below. It was a good one…As a reminder, this abandoned mine dates back to the 1800s and silver, lead, copper and zinc ore was pulled out of this complex... Several large, abandoned mines connect underground at this site, but the others are totally inaccessible from the surface. The mine we entered from will likely not be accessible for much longer either. We knew that the lower levels of the mine that we entered from were unexplored. So, our goals were to push as deep as possible into this mine and also to see if we could gain access to the neighboring mines.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LSeveral kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Pushing Into Unexplored Areas Of A Large Abandoned Mine Complex - Part 2 TVR Exploring 2024-05-01 | What you can see in this video of this abandoned mine should make it pretty clear why we love these unexplored mines so much… Aside from the majesty of seeing something that no other living human being has laid eyes upon, it is amazing to have the “time machine experience” of seeing everything exactly as it was when the last miner walked away a century or more ago. It is fascinating to see what the miners were using and exactly how they were using it.Not to beat a point to death, but this mine is yet another example of why I encourage people to not strip and loot these historical sites for junk to collect rust in their garage or front yard… What made this unexplored ground special was seeing how much was still down there and seeing precisely how the miners left everything.As a reminder, this abandoned mine dates back to the 1800s and silver, lead, copper and zinc ore was pulled out of this complex... Several large, abandoned mines connect underground at this site, but the others are totally inaccessible from the surface. The mine we entered from will likely not be accessible for much longer either. We knew that the lower levels of the mine that we entered from were unexplored. So, our goals were to push as deep as possible into this mine and also to see if we could gain access to the neighboring mines.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LSeveral kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Pushing Into Unexplored Areas Of A Large Abandoned Mine Complex - Part 1 TVR Exploring 2024-04-24 | This abandoned mine dates back to the 1800s and silver, lead, copper and zinc ore was pulled out of this complex of mines... Several large, abandoned mines connect underground at this site, but the others are totally inaccessible from the surface. The mine we entered from will likely not be accessible for much longer either. We knew that the lower levels of the mine that we entered from were unexplored. So, our goals were to push as deep as possible into this mine and also to see if we could gain access to the neighboring mines.My friends that you see in this video (familiar faces to any regular viewers) had done some reconnaissance on a prior trip to make sure that the site was accessible and also to determine that, yes, it was possible to push into the lower, unexplored levels. It takes a lot of time to determine which levels are still open versus caved, the optimum way to navigate down through a crumbling mine, etc. So, projects like this are not something that one does in a day.As you could probably see at the start of the video, this is fairly far from home for me and so I was fortunate enough to be able to piggyback on the efforts of my friends and swoop in for the trip where we pushed into the unexplored areas of this mine, which is always an awesome experience. To be clear, we got up to the edge of the unexplored areas in this video, but we get fully into them in the next video and they were definitely worth the long trip!This mine complex could be put into “Lost Worlds Project” territory, no? However, to avoid confusion, I will keep the name of this series as is and reserve the use of the “Lost Worlds Project” title exclusively for that particular abandoned mine complex in Nevada that we have been working on for several years now. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Deep Dive On The Biggest Gold Mine In This Area - Part 2 of 2 TVR Exploring 2024-04-17 | Every report that we read stated that this gold mine had closed down and been abandoned in the early 1900s and that this bottom level was simply a drain adit that connected to the main shaft after running straight in for approximately one thousand feet. Our intent was to follow the drain tunnel to the shaft and see if we could come up the shaft from the bottom (the mine shaft was inclined rather than vertical) since the top of the shaft had been filled in or caved long ago. We figured that it was a long shot, but worth the effort because these long shots sometimes pay off hugely – particularly with a large, historic mine. The “Lost Worlds Project” is a good example of that, to be sure!This is why, in the video, we seemed bewildered to have reached the shaft and then kept right on going past it. Those workings beyond the shaft were simply not supposed to be there. This was why we weren’t 100% certain that we’d passed the shaft until reaching the very end of the workings and confirmed that there was nothing else that it could have been (hence my relief at not hitting a caved section that would have denied us the answer to that question).The question, of course, is then raised as to when that “secret” work took place and by whom? Was the carbide graffiti from the 1930s and 1950s from miners or mine explorers? The graffiti from the 1950s seemed like it might have been a woman’s name. Were they mine explorers? Was this work done by a leaseholder during the Great Depression? Was this work done quietly after the mine officially closed to avoid oversight and taxes? Unfortunately, none of the records we located answers these questions. And such mysteries only get harder to solve with time as all of these involved pass away.We know that some survey work was done at this mine in the 1980s/early 1990s, which possibly included some core drilling. However, there is no sign of any new workings connected to this brief effort and, certainly, no production. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Deep Dive On The Biggest Gold Mine In This Area - Part 1 of 2 TVR Exploring 2024-04-10 | This is an abandoned gold mine that I have known about for many years due to its size and historical significance. However, it was an early one, with peak production in the 1800s and it had ceased operation not too far into the twentieth century. Many mines that shut down that long ago have only very limited and vague location information. One must follow clues in old reports and then get boots on the ground to follow the lay of the land. Sometimes we fail, but we’ve gotten pretty good at tracking down “lost” mines over the years based on very little information. This was one of those abandoned mines with very little location information.After being driven out of the high country for the season by snow a couple of years ago, we decided to gather the rumors we had heard about this mine along with all of the data from old reports and spent a while poring over old maps. This gave us a general area to focus on and what you will see in the two videos on this gold mine is the result of several visits over the years. We were pretty thorough in covering the area and so, I believe, we documented all that is left. However, we would love to be corrected on that.This mine was initially developed by a series of adits. The quality of the gold ore coming out from underground was sufficient for some serious investment money to be put into this project and the mine eventually grew into a large shaft with nine levels drifting off of it. The shaft was drained by that flooded tunnel that you saw near the start of this video (much more on that in the next video). The shaft was an incline shaft rather than a vertical shaft and has been reported to run to a depth of 1,600 feet. Some massive stopes were reported to have been hollowed out along the shaft.Production value is reported to have been in the millions of dollars (using the values of the time). So, if you do a little math, you can see that some serious money was made on this mine. Although, the mansion is not a bad clue either… The mansion is reported to have remained in use after the mine stopped operating and there are stories of grand events and parties that took place there until the mansion burned down (reportedly in the 1930s). The giant mill, hoist house and other infrastructure that can be seen in the historical photographs add to the impression that this was a serious operation as well. I have seen a written report that stated that the mill had 40 stamps and had an output of thousands of tons per month in the 1890s. However, an old timer that had a relative that worked there (I can’t recall if he claimed that it was his father or grandfather) swore to me that the mill had had one hundred stamps operating at one time. Whether it was forty stamps or one hundred, it was a large mill either way. Given the proximity of the mansion to the deafening stamp mill and other infrastructure, one can only conclude that the owners liked the sound of money being made! *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Bringing An Abandoned Gold Mine Back To Life: Part 24 of ? TVR Exploring 2024-04-03 | We’re still grinding away at our abandoned gold mine project. We very much appreciate the viewers that have continued to help make this possible with Patreon and through the direct donations on YouTube itself. Their support has allowed us to showcase the process of rehabilitating a mine and bringing a mine online. It has also allowed us to preserve a historically significant mine for at least another generation.Some viewers have questioned when they’re going to start seeing gold from this project… That impatience is likely based upon the ease with which the old timers could swing a mine into production. That is no longer the case. Even a small mine - operating legally, of course – will take several years and millions of dollars to hit the production stage. There is core drilling, permits to obtain, lawyers and consultants to pay, environmental testing, etc. It is not a swift process.We have been disappointed in not intercepting more of the blocked off (by collapses) older workings with the drill program. So, in the next video in this series, we’re going to be surveying some adjacent historical mining areas to see if they are worthy of bringing into this project. There were some significant mines next to ours.In the meantime, the pump in my well just failed. So, I’m going to make this short and start making some phone calls because no water = no fun. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Exploring Corkscrew Of Abandoned Mine Portals Through Mountain TVR Exploring 2024-03-27 | It was not our intention at the start, but we spent our entire day exploring the gold mine that hollowed out this mountain, wrapping our way down and around it… The lyrics for “She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain” came to mind on many an occasion! You see, it may not have been clear in the video, but we started at the top of the mountain, as that was our initial target based on old mine maps, and then made the fateful decision to “have a quick look” to see what might be down below. Aside from the error in leaving our climbing gear behind, we failed to realize that we were committing ourselves to an entire day of corkscrewing down and around the mountain as one appealing adit or bit of historical mining infrastructure after another presented itself on the horizon.What we had here was obvious older workings (the first adit we visited that punched into the huge stope) from the 1800s that may have been worked into the 1920s or 1930s. However, these workings would have been difficult and expensive to access. The lower – and much more accessible workings – were obviously worked up until recently. Ease of access is a big factor with many mines! There are many rich gold deposits in our world that are simply too remote or inaccessible to be profitably mined. The difficulty in accessing some of the workings at this mine provided us with an interesting look into many generations of mining from the 1800s to today. Many things in small-scale, underground mining have stayed very much the same, while others have only changed slightly (you’ll notice the larger adits and drifts in the more modern mines, for example). Looking at the large operations of Newmont, BHP, Anglo American, etc. though, mining has changed considerably from a century ago. Think of a modern, open pit mining operation and compare that to some of the shoestring prospecting operations I have featured on this channel. It’s like comparing tossing a rock into the air with a rocket launching a crew of astronauts to Mars. Underground miners in general are an endangered species and with the larger companies like Rio Tinto increasingly automating underground mining and bringing in robots for as much of the work as possible, that is probably the future until the pendulum swings and human labor again becomes the cheapest input.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
An Unexpectedly Rich Mine Exploring Area TVR Exploring 2024-03-21 | When we’re driven out of the highest reaches of the Sierra Nevadas by snow, we must normally content ourselves with international trips or desert trips (the odd winter trip to Alaska notwithstanding)… However, we recently started looking into an area in the lower parts of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Feather River Canyon. We have flirted with the Feather River Canyon in the past (and actually had our worst mine exploring experience to date on one fateful evening there several years ago when visiting the Five Bears Mine). However, I had discounted the potential around Forbestown and other parts of the lower Feather River Canyon. Sure, the area has a rich history of gold mining. However, this was so long ago that maps with accurate locations for historical mines and other sites are nonexistent or very rare. Furthermore, this area does not have the hard rock characteristics that keep the mines in the high country open more often. Instead, this area has thick layers of dirt that are created by the organic material of the dense forests. The dirt caves in and erodes old mines shut very quickly.The southern reaches of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (the southern region of the Mother Lode) are far more developed though and so, despite also harboring an extensive period of activity during the Gold Rush, all too often, one will simply find houses or a fuel station where historical mines and other sites used to be. To thrive as a mine explorer in this type of environment, one must possess local connections and that crucial local knowledge. I do not. So, aside from a handful of successful trips to this region, I have generally left it alone.The Feather River Canyon is not developed and, especially for California, is actually surprisingly remote and unpopulated. So, we have braved the numerous grow ops, thick brush and steep canyons to run down some great sites. It takes more work to find the mines given vague location information in most cases, but it has proved fulfilling to do so as these sites are simply not picked over like those in a place such as southern Nevada that are visited by hordes of people. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever.I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Unbelievable Location For Gold Mine In The Alaska Wilderness TVR Exploring 2024-03-13 | The incredible location of this mine in the pit (I would just love to see historical photos of the network of platforms and trestles that supported the gold mining operation) with the river smashing through the workings at the bottom distracted me from the mine itself. However, the abandoned gold mine was pretty incredible in its own right, even without its location taken into account… Come on, steam boilers! How often do you see steam equipment – especially steam equipment frozen into an underground mine? And that winze with the giant skip car? Throw those two examples in with the location and I can say with some confidence that this must be one of the most unique mines in Alaska, if not the whole United States.Obviously, the mine complex of the next day wasn’t as visually stunning or as unique as the mine of the first day. Ha, that is an unfair competition though because the mine of the first day would blow anything away! Having said that, I wish that a boat or something had been floating in the “lake” where that flooded stope was! That was a stope of a massive scale (The closest I can think of was that underground lake at the lead mine in Kazakhstan that was so big that we couldn’t even see the edges). Calling it a “ballroom” as large stopes are sometimes called is an understatement to say the least… Interestingly, the map of that mine from the second day shows an adit running almost straight in and then the mine essentially consisted of just that giant stope. Well, that was according to the map I found. The very last adit in the video was a part of that same mine and it wasn’t featured on the map at all!This was our first mine exploring trip to Alaska in the winter. Yes, it was cold. Very cold. And the shorter days apply constant time pressure. However, it has its pluses. For example, it is actually easier to reach some sites because one is able to simply walk right across frozen lakes and rivers. For those of you that live in a warm climate, that may be difficult to process. However, in these cold climates, bodies of water essentially become roads and trails in the winter. Imagine a nice, flat surface with no brush blocking your way! Another plus for winter mine exploring in Alaska is that one also avoids Alaska’s ferocious mosquitoes.On a completely unrelated note, the flights to and from Alaska were surprisingly full. Who are these crazy people visiting Alaska in the dead of winter? They can’t all have been mine explorers trekking in to remote historical sites across frozen rivers. I sure miss how it was traveling during the months of peak 2020 Covid fears… We took a flight to Anchorage, Alaska from Seattle, Washington during that time that had four passengers on it. Four people – and we were two of them! So many wonderful examples like that… We drove across the country then as well, which was also a great experience. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Journey Through Abandoned Mountain Mine & Mining Camp TVR Exploring 2024-03-06 | This area had burned over a year or two prior to our visit. That made the hike in to the abandoned mine easier as much of the brush had been cleared out. However, the fire also deleted any remaining structures right around the mine, which is unfortunate. Given what was still intact of that aerial tramway, there must have been a good amount of infrastructure present at one time to support it. And, of course, those workshops and other buildings that we passed on the way in seemed like they had high potential to be interesting as well!This was rather an unusual mine for us as they mined for aluminum ore here and I can’t think of any other aluminum mines that we have visited. If the ground that we encountered here is any indication though, I doubt that we’ll be getting underground at too many aluminum mines because almost all of it was in terrible shape (collapsed).The history of aluminum itself is interesting to me – how it was once immensely valuable and as the techniques for processing it improved, the prices dropped to the low levels that we are familiar with today. I was unable to locate historical information on this particular mine, but it was obviously an older one. I’d love to be able to tell you with some specificity when the mine operated as a chart of the declining prices of aluminum would give us a good idea of what their costs were and what pain point on the prices forced them to cease operations. It’s kind of neat to think of the possibility of aluminum from this mine in the remote deserts of Nevada going into the frames of aircraft and flying all over the world.It was pretty cool to spend the night inside of the cabin at the mining camp. We’ve spent the night at plenty of abandoned mines and mining camps before, but that was the first time that one of the buildings was clean enough to sleep in. Usually, the rodents have done enough to make them so disgusting that sleeping outside is preferable. However, aside from the Mormon crickets swarming everywhere, this cabin was still in pretty good shape. Haha, the Mormon crickets were bad enough though that, in the end, we had to sleep inside of a tent inside of the cabin. For those that haven’t seen Mormon crickets firsthand, trust me, you do not want them crawling all over you. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Sand to Snow Expedition: Forgotten Mines In Extreme Contrasts TVR Exploring 2024-02-28 | We’re traveling from abandoned mines in the desert heat to snowy peaks in this one… However, it will most likely not shock you, dear viewers, to hear that our mine exploring in the highest reaches of the Sierra Nevadas and the Rockies is now over for the season. Does this stop us from exploring? Not at all. However, it does require a recalibration of the abandoned mines and historical sites that we choose to visit and explore. As you know, the places that we prefer to visit are the obscure, difficult-to-reach, lost, etc. where one typically cannot just roll up to a mine portal in a Jeep and step inside. No, we prefer those that require an exhausting hike in that leaves our feet blistered and our backs aching from the packs of heavy mine exploring gear. Such places do not have maintained roads (or roads at all). So, when the snow accumulates, we must accept the power of Mother Nature and retreat.“Just go to the desert!” some have thundered at us… Well, it is not so simple. Even the deserts are not a sure thing as many parts of the high desert are inaccessible in the winter due to snow, mud and washed out roads in the winter. And, bear in mind, even a light dusting of snow can be enough to cover artifacts or openings that we would easily spot in the summer. This is why our visits to the warmer climes of Arizona and southern Nevada have mostly taken place in the winter. These are long journeys for us though.There’s a new (new to us) area at lower elevations that we started working on last year and have resumed this year. It is closer to our U.S. base of operations and so we’re able to visit more frequently and to put in more time. Also, this area is really only viable for the winter season as, in the summer, the terrain is saturated with illegal grow ops, thick brush and poison oak, terrible heat and way too many mosquitoes and yellowjackets. In the winter, the growers tend to migrate to places like Mexico or, at least, to lower their guard since they are not growing anything then. The brush and poison oak have lost their leaves and are at a low ebb. The cooler winter temperatures make the hiking far more comfortable and greatly reduce our water consumption. And, of course, the cold weather keeps the mosquitoes, yellowjackets and other unpleasant flying insects in check. I’ll start posting videos of this new area soon, although it might not stand out that it is a new area unless one studies the vegetation carefully. We didn’t finish any of the sites last year (steep canyons, thick brush and barely or non-existent roads = they take a lot of time and energy to properly survey and cover) and had to push into this year to finish them.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Bringing An Abandoned Gold Mine Back To Life: Part 23 of ? TVR Exploring 2024-01-31 | There’s a certain exotic appeal to working in the snow when the first storm of the season hits. That “appeal” wears off after a few minutes when the cold starts biting into you and the wind starts whipping through your always-damp clothing. I often say that the temperature is the same 55 degrees(ish) underground wherever you are in the world. Well, there’s an element in play here at this gold mine that changes that… The powerful blower that we use is blasting freezing air onto us underground. So, standing in the cold water flowing through the mine for hours, while freezing air is blasted over us can become a bit uncomfortable after a while.Not that I’m complaining. I started my professional life working at an investment bank in London. I had the hot secretary, the open-ended expense account, the expensive client dinners, etc. So, I can speak to both sides. I’d take the work of a miner any day. Not just because of the work itself, but the camaraderie without the office politics, the absence of petty humiliations from demanding clients, the great feeling after hard physical work (like a good workout in the gym), the experience of something new every day – I could go on and on…A viewer asked the other day what our intent with the core drilling is: We’re essentially drawing up a map of what is around us for several hundred feet in every direction underground without having to drill and blast our way through everything to find out. The core drilling allows us to map out serpentine veins, ore bodies and, most importantly for us, to see where the old workings are that are not on the newer maps we have of the mine. The old timers did a lot of work in the 1800s at our mine, but the maps from that time (if they ever existed) were lost long ago. So, there are large sections of Levels 1 and 2 that remain a mystery and even parts of Level 3 are unmapped and unexplored (Level 3 is the primary level where we are working and are what you see in almost every video). So, the core drilling gives us an idea of what we have and, with that knowledge, what is best to do with it. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Echoes in the Dust: The Forgotten Lives of Desert Miners TVR Exploring 2024-01-24 | This is an old mine. You can tell by the nature of the surface and underground workings as well as by the artifacts and infrastructure left behind… The mine changed hands and was abandoned so many times that it is almost impossible to properly trace the history of it (the name has been changed countless times). Some of the USGS records, suggest that antimony and tungsten were mined here, but the area is known for lead, silver and other minerals. That is dry technical data though. Seeing that little cabin and the primitive living quarters established in the portal of the adit and winze behind the cabin made me tremendously curious about the miners that lived, worked and even possibly died here. In other words, we were presented with a mystery.Who were these forgotten miners? What were their lives like? Where were they from? Where did they go? There is absolutely no information on the miners that were here. None. Sometimes they leave graffiti behind in the abandoned mines that has names or towns they were connected to. However, this mine is so old that it seems they either didn’t have the carbide to leave the graffiti (using candles instead) or it has been lost with time. Of course, these questions about the PEOPLE connected to these old mines rather than just the matter-of-fact information on minerals, the number of adits or mine shafts, etc. is applicable to any abandoned mine. Seeing that cabin, the abandoned food containers, the little bench and table, the bed established in the portal to escape the heat and cold of the outside world, etc. hit me harder than normal though and made me very curious about these specific miners, particularly as there is so little (none) information out there about them. They are a huge mystery. We know absolutely nothing about them. That feels tragic and wrong to me.Perhaps I am just being sentimental… However, it seems to me that these hardy miners were on the frontiers of the human experience, carving out an underground world in one of the harshest environments on earth, very far removed from any comforts or civilization and at a time when existence anywhere was not an easy thing. And yet they did it here! They don’t deserve any recognition for that?*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
This Happens Way Too Often... TVR Exploring 2024-01-21 | The normal videos that get published show the wins, but this is what we experience the majority of the time... At least we got a little way in before hitting the caved section.
Gold Mine Hidden Along A River Has Numerous Surprises TVR Exploring 2024-01-17 | This old gold mine hidden away along a river is a classic example of the success of some of our mine hunting trips… Many of the mines from the “Gold Rush” era in the Sierras are not marked on any maps or are only partially marked (meaning that one is only given very vague location details or incomplete information). So, we’ll often visit areas that we know are thick with history and just start following likely trails, geological features, descriptions in books, etc. in the hope of coming across something. More often than not, such trips are a success! There was a single adit marked at the location of this mine, for example, but we discovered multiple adits and other features that were not listed.I haven’t been able to track down historical details (yet) on this mine and so I suspect that it operated under another name in the past than what is listed on the maps now. Most historical mines are worked initially, then abandoned, then worked again, then abandoned and so on depending on mineral prices, technological developments and other such factors. You saw the equipment from around the 1990s at this mine, there was infrastructure in this mine that was suggestive of the 1930s and, likely, this mine was discovered and worked well before that. So, this mine perfectly fits that abandoned mine cycle.It's interesting about the work that was done in the 1990s... Gold prices were extremely low then and yet, at least in this area, there seems to have been a big burst of mining activity around then. Despite gold prices rising almost 10-fold from the 1990s prices, we haven’t seen a repeat of that mini gold rush that the 1990s produced. We’ve discussed it and feel it was likely something of a last gasp from the old timers. Miners that came of age during the gold mining boom of the 1970s and early 1980s would have been able to learn from the REAL old timers that were still around then.It seems like a lot of work done in the 1990s was from these guys just before they got too old to handle the heavy drills, mucking and other backbreaking work associated with gold mining. Unfortunately, not enough young people were around or interested enough to glean the knowledge of this last batch of old timers and so much has been lost. There simply aren’t enough underground miners with the knowledge and expertise to be able to operate and work in these small gold mines today doing things like track work, building ore chutes, etc. Much of the world’s gold production today comes from gigantic mines where most of the work is done by machines.Small mines, such as this one, are simply left abandoned… Yes, part of that is due to some of the silly rules and regulations (I’ve shared some examples of those with you at our mine), but a large part of it, I believe, is due simply to a lack of available talent. Finding capable workers has been an ongoing struggle at our mine and we’ve had to look as far away as Alaska to bring people in. So, there just doesn’t seem to be the manpower or talent left to fuel another boom of gold prospecting, speculation and exploration. Yes, I know of exceptions, but I’m speaking in generalizations here. When something eventually happens in the future (a monetary crisis or whatever) to make gold and gold mining irresistible again, it seems that the next generation will have to learn everything all over again. I don’t envy them, but resourcefulness and innovation have always been a hallmark of small mining operations. So, I expect they’ll muddle through and eventually get it figured out after a few generations. Well, either that or AI-driven robots will be doing all of the work! *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Wild Descent In Magnificent 1800s Silver Mine TVR Exploring 2024-01-10 | The rich silver ore at this magnificent abandoned mine was discovered by a group of prospectors back in the 1860s and mining began soon after. The ore was so rich here that mining took place uninterrupted for decades… And although this was a silver mine, there is a LOT of gold and gold mining still in this district. The gold mining is continuing to this day, and it wouldn’t surprise me to eventually see this entire historical mine consumed by a modern gold mining project chasing deposits below the old workings seen in this video.Something I wanted to expand on as I fear that I did not explain it well or that it was unclear in the video… What we saw at this abandoned mine were multiple generations of work. Do you recall near the very beginning of the video when I made the observation about the drill mark? As we learned, that work was from the 1920s and that short little loop was made during that time to bypass the caved portal dating back to the 1800s.Given the size/shape of the workings and the artifacts that were present, it seems that the shaft and the workings we roped down were mostly from the 1800s. However, work was obviously done to expand these underground workings in the 1920s/1930s as evidenced by the air lines running up into the stopes past where the ore car was (plus the date on the dynamite box helps considerably).The adit that intercepted the shaft at the bottom was likely run in the 1920s as well given the size and purpose of it. Also, for example, the air lines were running UP to the stope with the ore car and not down from above. Then, obviously, some exploratory work was done – likely in the 1960s, 70s or 80s – as evidenced by the plastic piping and the ribbons (possibly for surveying, possibly for sampling, possibly for core drilling – there wasn’t enough left to be able to say for sure). I would be very curious to know if the miners from that project made it past the large caved section in the talc that blocked us or not. They may have encountered that section and just have given up at that point. However, if they made it past that zone, they would have gotten into some very extensive workings and might have seen some very cool stuff. I also wonder if it was the latest miners that dumped that talc into the old stopes or if the older generations of miners did that?I don’t know if the miners intentionally caved the adit on the bottom level or whether that happened naturally. Regardless, it is very caved now… We actually passed it earlier in the day on the way up to where we eventually gained access to the mine. I never thought that we would be standing and looking at the other side of that collapse though!*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Lost Worlds Project: Our Best Mine Exploring Ever TVR Exploring 2024-01-03 | I hope that you’ve been enjoying watching the Lost Worlds Project as much as we have enjoyed exploring this abandoned mine complex. This really is the best that mine exploring delivers: seeing the wonders underground that no living person has ever laid eyes upon… The graffiti dating back to the 1800s from long-dead miners, the candle stubs and egg shells where the miners took a break, the newspapers from the 1800s and the countless other sights and artifacts all combine to make this a truly unspoiled historical treasure.In prior videos, some commenters have questioned my description of some of the chambers that I described as caves. However, the identification of some of these as caves is not speculation on my part. I am basing these statements on the detailed maps created by the miners themselves. The miners often dumped waste rock into these caves, which can give them an unnatural appearance and, I suspect, that this may be the source of the confusion for those questioning the cave scenario.Of the caves we’ve seen so far, my favorite is, unquestionably, the massive one in this video with the curious trail running through it. The break area or staging area with the newspapers and candles at the end of the trail was the perfect addition to the cave.So, that potentially lethal ride I took down that hole that opened up in the drift? The miners obviously noticed that vein I was checking out as well… They either mined it down and made a stope there or ran an ore pass down to drop ore to levels below. Either way, there was a large void left behind. Rock sloughing off from the side loosely plugged the top of the void and a layer of dirt and smaller rock fell on top of that. So, when I came cruising along more than a century after the miners worked there, I saw a level surface with some slight groundfall on the right side. The middle of a drift is not where one would expect a big hole to be. We’ve seen it before, but it is rare. Fortunately, as I fell, more rock tumbled into the void and loosely plugged it again, which arrested my fall. After I was extricated with some help from Jeremy, we could hear bits of rock and gravel falling into the space below and they fell for quite a way.Even a non-fatal injury, such as a broken leg, becomes potentially fatal in this environment. With the danger and complexity of reaching this point in the mine, absolutely no one is coming in to rescue us if anything goes wrong. I see a lot of ignorant comments about rescues in abandoned mines, but, really, unless it is something easily accessible from the surface, abandoned mine rescues do not happen. The responders do not have the experience or risk tolerance to take on a rescue mission (and certainly not a recovery mission). There is more than one abandoned mine in Nevada with bodies still inside of it… So, if we can’t make it out on our own when something goes wrong, we’re almost certainly not ever coming out of this mine. And unless the injury gets you with shock or blood loss, it isn’t dehydration or anything like that which kills one in this situation. It is hypothermia. When you stop moving underground, it is almost impossible to stay warm after a few minutes.However, enough with the downsides of mine exploring… We can’t wait to get back to this mine and to try running out more options to get to the lower levels. The maps show some very, very interesting looking features farther down!*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
On A Quartz Vein Binge In Underground Gold Mine TVR Exploring 2023-12-27 | It is not uncommon to see miners drop a winze or run a stope on a rich quartz vein in a gold mine. If a quartz vein is particularly good, one can even see a couple of areas in a mine where the miners ran both up and down on a vein… However, it is unusual to see THIS MANY instances in which miners chased a vein simultaneously up and down as they did at this abandoned gold mine. And, to be clear, I’m referring to the smaller, historical mines and not the gigantic, modern mine complexes with that observation.If the flooded workings at this mine were comparable to the stopes, a lot of quartz was hauled out! The small waste rock pile outside did not in any way compare to the volume of space that we observed underground. So, that is further evidence that they were bringing gold ore (quartz) out rather than just waste rock. That quartz would have been milled down (there was a stamp mill near the adit) and there would be little trace of it today.I thought it was interesting to see where the miners lost the quartz vein for several hundred feet, but persisted and found it again. It is rare in the older mines to see areas where the miners rolled the dice for that long and continued working in the hope of getting on the vein again. That they were so motivated to do so at this mine suggests that the vein must have been pretty rich.If you think about the situation at this mine, that suggests that there are a lot of abandoned gold mines out there where a rich quartz vein is just a short distance away from where the miners abandoned their work. Should technology advance to the point where gold can be detected more than just a few feet into solid rock, some interesting “near misses” could undoubtedly be uncovered.This is one of those gold mines that has changed owners and names so many times that it is impossible to trace its history. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Underground Visit To An Ancient River Of Gold TVR Exploring 2023-12-20 | It’s been a while since we’ve visited an underground placer mine and so we’re back with a video of our beloved ancient rivers of gold… It was quite a trek in through the adit to reach the zone where the ancient river channel was located. And, as you saw, there were veins of quartz that the miners intercepted along the run into the placer material. I didn’t see any evidence that these were actually mined, but they obviously tested them. I always receive a lot of questions about the ancient river channels and the placer material that we have in this area… So, allow me to explain: The placer you see here is made up of the compressed remains of giant ancient rivers that used to run through where the Sierra Nevada mountains of California are now. Just as modern creeks and rivers in “gold country” fill up with gold over time, these ancient rivers did as well. However, there were no miners around back then to pick the gold out of them. Over time, volcanic eruptions and other geologic activity buried these ancient rivers and shifted them around. Now, one can find these ancient river channels at the top of a mountain. And, of course, even there they still contain the gold that tumbled down into them so many millions of years ago. So, gold miners will eagerly tunnel in through even thousands of feet of rock after them. No one knows who first discovered that there were ancient rivers full of gold buried in California, but can you imagine what went through their mind when they made that discovery?I believe the finest example of an underground gold mine tapping into the ancient river channels remains this video:youtube.com/watch?v=G_HQr1WacDwGiven the unique nature of these types of placer gold mines, I have always had a certain fondness for them (something about walking through a river that dinosaurs drank out of). However, they are perhaps even more structurally unstable than the serpentine veins in many of the lode mines and the underground placer mines can produce some horrible, neck-deep orange mud. So, they are not without their downsides, to be sure! Nevertheless, I hope that you find them interesting. Thank you for watching. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. *****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Abandoned Gold Mine Overloaded With Quartz & Crystals TVR Exploring 2023-12-13 | I hope that seeing the canyon where this abandoned gold mine is located toward the end of the video gives at least some sense of how remote and steep this location is… The original miners, obviously, resorted to using an aerial tram system. On other steep trails and roads in this area, it is documented that wagon drivers in the past would chain heavy logs to the back of their wagons to make their way down the steep grades without losing control (because there is no way that a hand brake is going to cut it on an absurdly steep grade with a loaded wagon). So, it stands to reason that those two combined to serve this mine in its original era of production.Our current theory for how the crew got the heavy equipment and gear in during the 1990s is via helicopter. They could have had a cargo helicopter – like those made by Sikorsky – bring in the compressor, other mining equipment and a couple of pallets of food and other such essentials. That probably wouldn’t have been insanely expensive back then, but even if it were, I don’t see that they had any choice. Oh, and, no, we did not miss any roads or trails leading into this gold mine from elsewhere.We’re hoping that someone involved will recognize this site and can provide a little more detail on the work in the 1990s. Ha, this is one of those rare situations where we actually have far more questions about the modern work than the work of the old timers. What the original miners did here is pretty straightforward and understandable.In regard to the crystals… Yes, other mines have them. Undoubtedly, other mines have more of them. However, I can’t think of any that we’ve visited that had a greater concentration of crystals in a space that size. Of course, my memory isn’t as sharp as it used to be though. I’ve had a lot of concussions in my life, which is probably catching up to me. Still, I think I am right about this one.Regardless, this mine is holding an ace with its crystals in that it also incorporates the Mouse Palace, which I challenge any other crystal-laden mines to top!*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Rough Visit To A Mine Not Even Supposed To Exist - Part 2 of 2 TVR Exploring 2023-12-10 | This visit was a lot easier than the first one since we were prepared this time. However, for the sake of continuity, I had to keep the same title... Ha, you’d be surprised how much of a difference it makes to have waders. Lights are an obvious necessity in underground abandoned mines (as are the ropes on the vertical work). However, I think the waders represent the biggest (exponential, really) increase in comfort of all of the mine exploring gear. As I have demonstrated a few times, it is possible to go into flooded or muddy mines without them, but it is really not pleasant to do so.I’d say that the adit I showed in the first video is obviously the oldest at this mine. So, the miners must have liked the gold that they were pulling out of there. There wasn’t enough left of the second adit to date it, but the third adit was consistent with what we’ve seen from mines in the area that were last worked in the 1930s. The clues from that third one are the timber sets and the condition of the timbers, the rail, the ore car, the shape and size of the adit itself and, lastly, the infrastructure left outside. To be clear, I am suggesting that it was LAST worked in the 1930s, but that is not necessarily when it was first worked, as its origins may date back to the 1800s as well (as the adit in the first video certainly does).It is impossible to tell from the video, but the second adit was running roughly in line with the first adit (but with that small meadow and hill separating them). The third adit punched sideways into the vein that the first two adits seemed to be working on.I used to break up longer videos into multiple parts that I would try to keep under half an hour as I figured that people would not want to sit through long videos. However, I found that the first video in a series would get a good number of views, but views on the subsequent videos in a series would fall off a cliff. So, I started posting longer videos. I still do some videos in parts if they would just be too long otherwise. This video is kind of on the line as to whether it could be one video or broken into two parts. So, I’ll be curious if it still holds true that views for subsequent videos in a series collapse. That is particularly the case here as the second video is of a higher quality.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Rough Visit To A Mine Not Even Supposed To Exist - Part 1 of 2 TVR Exploring 2023-12-06 | I often use old topographic maps out in the field when scouting abandoned mines to explore… As you know, I’ve been doing this for many years and (until this mine) whenever I have come across a mine marked “Inactive” on a historical topo map, it has never been accessible. To be marked “Inactive” on a topographic map that can be a century or more old means that the mine has been abandoned for a very long time! Therefore, whenever we have visited such mines in the past, they have always been eroded shut or completely caved. Often, there hasn’t even been much of interest on the surface anymore either given the amount of time that has passed since the mine was last worked. Not so with this abandoned mine!To further reinforce the idea in our minds that this mine almost certainly did not exist anymore was the fact that the conditions in the area were not at all conducive to the mine being open… Specifically, I am referring to an abundance of brush in the area as well as a heavy accumulation of topsoil. The dirt or topsoil is far more prone to caving in on itself or in eroding a mine shut. So, we generally have low expectations in such terrain, but there are enough exceptions to keep us checking. However, with the dirt conditions AND the “Inactive” status on the topo map, we knew beyond any doubt that this mine would be gone. Well, you saw the reality…Having learned our lesson, we returned to the site in Part 2 with all of our gear. So, the production quality is higher with the second part as I had the stabilizer and other such gear for the second visit. And, of course, for there to be a Part 2, you can rest assured that we found some good stuff on the return visit! *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
A Small Mine Exploring First For Me TVR Exploring 2023-11-30 | As the title proclaims, this is just a small mine exploring clip to show you something that I thought was interesting... Unfortunately, this unusual feature ended up being the most interesting thing about this abandoned zinc mine as the mine is a little too close to a large population center and has, therefore, been vandalized and completely stripped of almost everything of interest (aside from the Joshua Tree support timbers/lagging). Given the proximity to Las Vegas, this mine was once considered for use as a fallout shelter during the height of the Cold War when a number of abandoned mines were surveyed and prepped for use as fallout shelters.I featured another mine that was part of that program (and go into a lot more detail about the program in the description below the video) here: youtube.com/watch?v=fopWxw9xPx8&list=PLWEW7ixiDkjSVIo5J19ucgF6_vjfLYb7p&index=79*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
A Canyon Full Of Silver Mines TVR Exploring 2023-11-29 | An abandoned silver mine in Nevada? Who would have thought such a thing were possible... Yes, this canyon of mines was primarily a silver mining operation, although there was also some gold and copper reported as secondary minerals. The mineral potential of the area was first discovered in the 1860s and a settlement sprang into existence around that time to exploit these ore bodies. Mining was conducted throughout the 1800s and then, again, in the 1930s. Obviously, some work was also done in the 1970s or early 1980s, but I was unable to locate any records on this.The large workings along the creek that you can see in the distance at the start of the video are the remains of a shaft, developed during the 1800s, that dropped for hundreds of feet. Even the reports from the 1930s state that these workings are a bit of a mystery as they are all underwater (a situation that has not changed since then).I’m on the fence about returning to this site to rope down the ore pass at the end of the video. The amount of shit (I’m talking about literal shit) that one would have to crawl through to get into the ore pass and to descend it is really off-putting. Furthermore, our ropes and gear would come out covered in shit as well. So, there’s that. Also, the amount of water at this site suggests that any cool artifacts would likely be rusted or rotted beyond recognition. Furthermore, given the number of caved adits and workings at this site, whether we could even get far enough to see rusted or rotted artifacts is brought into question. Lastly, the evidence of work done in the 1970s or the early 1980s makes me think that any cool stuff would likely have been hauled out or destroyed by core drilling and blasting. Those are the cons. The pros, of course, are that we don’t know what is down there.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Lost Worlds Project: Into the Deep Unknown TVR Exploring 2023-11-22 | Haha, I’ve actually been impatient to get through these past couple of videos so that I can reveal in the next video what is in that cave with the undercut ledge and, more significantly, what is beyond it… To me, this whole complex represents the peak of mine exploring, but I really feel like the next level in this series perfectly encapsulates it all – the camaraderie, the technical aspects of multiple rope descents (and the exhausting ascents) in extreme conditions, the amazing discoveries, the fact that no living person has ever laid eyes upon what we are pushing into… I just realized as I was typing that last sentence that it is likely that these workings have never been photographed before and, certainly, no video of them (outside of our little crew) has ever emerged before.Given the nature of the internet, I’m sure that a few viewers will rudely declare that some of the caves were stopes. No, they are actually caves… The miners expanded some of them and some of the caves tie into stopes, but they were originally caves. The miners also dumped large amounts of waste rock into them, which gives them an artificial appearance, but, again, they were originally caves. How can we be so sure? We have a map that details exactly where the caves and stopes were and the reports on this complex of mines describes the miners punching through - and descending through - a series of caves as the mine was developed.I’m sure that some of you noticed that the levels shown in this video were more damp than the levels in the prior videos. That stands to reason as we are descending toward the water table. However, interestingly, the levels below these are generally drier. Odd, huh? I suspect that there is perhaps a specific route that water is percolating down through or that the type of rock and soil layered on this level (possibly heavy in clay) is slowing down the percolation of the water down to the water table and it is, in effect, getting backed up on these levels. That’s wild speculation, of course, as I do not possess a hydrologic engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines. However, those possibilities are the only explanations that made sense to me.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Extreme Location For An Abandoned Mine TVR Exploring 2023-11-15 | It would be an understatement to say that this was not an easy abandoned mine to get to – and that is a reference to both the drive in as well as the grueling hike up to the mine itself… As we learned on the way out, there was an easier way that we could have driven out. However, on an initial journey, such things are usually not obvious. Likewise, we were literally scaling sheer rock cliffs at times in order to reach the workings highlighted in this video. However, on the way down, we discovered the trail used by the miners, which, naturally, was in the perfect location to make the best use of the features of the mountain. To be fair, it was still steep and still required some work to get to from the workings we explored. However, it was the best route the miners could have achieved on that steep mountain. And, of course, it was one of those things that we did not discover until starting to make our way down.Long-suffering viewers will know that I am a big fan of rail in (and around) the abandoned mines. Miners’ trails have a similar appeal to me. I like the aesthetics of them. I like the fact that they are often difficult to locate, but are usually quite rewarding when they are found. I like the fact that they seem obvious once they have been located. I like the historic bottles and other treasures that one often sees along the old trails. I like walking the same route and seeing the same scenery that the old timers did long before me. Well, you’re probably getting the idea…The earliest records I found relating to this mine stretch back to 1909, but you should always take that with a grain of salt because records were incomplete, non-existent or often lost in the early days. So, many mines are older than what is suggested by the availability of written records. This was listed as a zinc mine with some gold, lead, silver and copper. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
The Power Of A Giant Mining Operation TVR Exploring 2023-11-08 | The "power" in this title is a reference to the evidence of modern mining left behind at this site… Specifically, I’m referring to the building-sized slabs of rock that have smashed across the workings of the abandoned mine, to the tremendous cavities left behind in the earth and to the sheer, incredible quantity of rock moved… Modern pit mines simply haul everything away to neat piles and so, aside from the massive holes in the ground, I think many fail to appreciate the sheer destructive power of modern mining. Similarly, when mining takes place underground, it is difficult to see more than pieces of the puzzle and it is often difficult to appreciate the scale of what has been done. Consider, for example, some of the mine shafts that we have roped down. When I shine my light down a shaft, it just looks like a black hole. However, we have descended for more than 1,000 feet in some mines. That’s the equivalent of a skyscraper higher than 100 stories! That may seem abstract, but look up at a skyscraper of that height the next time you’re in a city and ask yourself if that scale is even remotely conveyed in the videos that I show of such mines.This mine from the 1950s is unique in that it is from an era of transition from historic mining methods to modern mining. Thus, we see the ravaged landscape left behind and a glimpse of the destructive potential of mining without it being cleaned up and sanitized as modern mines (at least in jurisdictions like the U.S. and Europe) are. Yes, I know, the hydraulic mining of the past moved massive quantities of gravel and dirt and certainly showed us the destructive potential within humanity. However, hydraulic mining was washing away ancient river channels and wasn’t smashing through solid rock as was done at this mine. It didn’t toss building-sized slabs of rock around as if they were nothing and, at least to me, doesn’t showcase the same raw force. Haha, maybe you had to have been there…In case it was not possible to tell from the geology, this was an iron mining operation. As I mentioned above, the work seen in this video was done in the 1950s. There is some suggestion in the records of minor work being done in the area back to the early 1900s (or possibly even earlier) to extract copper and lead. However, we saw no evidence of this and I suspect that any such workings were devoured by the larger iron mining operations later. Various companies have come out and kicked rocks at this site and there has even been some surface drilling done for sampling, but no one has yet been inspired to bring this mine back into production. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
The Most Dangerous Mine Weve Been In For A While TVR Exploring 2023-11-01 | We’ve been doing too many nice, dry desert mines lately… It was time to return to our roots of exploring flooded, muddy and dangerous abandoned mines. This mine certainly ticked the boxes regarding those requirements. And, really, with the ore car, the ore chutes, the cool geology and the impressive stopes, this was a hell of a pleasant surprise for a mine that we had low expectations for!This abandoned gold mine is unusual in that it is a lode mine beneath a large section of ancient river channel that was hydraulicly mined. Typically, lode deposits will be above placer deposits (the lode deposits feed into the placer workings). However, the rules of the ancient river channels are very different (as evidenced by their frequent presence on mountaintops). Having seen no evidence of quartz outcropping on the surface, I still believe the lode elements of this mine were an accidental discovery. It was very common for gold miners to run drain tunnels underneath the ancient river channels or adits to tap the sweet spot where the placer material meets the bedrock. An adit run in toward this contact zone sweet spot can be more profitable and less work than removing massive amounts of rock and gravel overburden. I would imagine the miners were probably fairly surprised to encounter rich quartz veins on the way to where they thought the ancient river channels were hidden.The miners may even have reached the ancient river channel. I have only seen that orange mine mud that we were wallowing in on one or two occasions where a mine did not directly hit the ancient river channel. The point where I was forced to stop by that mud wall spilling down in front of me is a feature I have seen in underground placer mines where the miners hit the ancient river channel. Right at that spot, it will often be impossible to proceed in these mines.I can’t tell you about the history of this mine because all we have is a point on a map. No name. It’s in one of the oldest mining districts in California though.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Bringing An Abandoned Gold Mine Back To Life: Part 22 of ? TVR Exploring 2023-10-25 | I have not been posting as many updates on the mine because I feel like I need to have something new (or relatively new) to show to keep it interesting… The phase of the mine that we’re in at this point in the series is heavily focused on exploration. In other words, running drifts to try and intercept the unmapped older workings and to set up drill stations in order to map out the caved upper workings via core drilling. However, this is a very repetitious process of drill, blast and muck over and over again. So, there isn’t a lot to show of this process that you haven’t seen already.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Great Mine With Wild Legacy Of A Tragic Game & Hollywood Royalty TVR Exploring 2023-10-18 | Silver, zinc and lead were discovered at this site in 1887, but it was not until the 1920s that work on this mine really took off, with extensive mining, an aerial tramway, mill and more. The mill infrastructure was significant enough to serve as a filming location for a film starring Roy Rogers! Starting around the 5:28 mark, you can see the mill below (the film quality isn't great, but still gives a good sense of what was there):youtu.be/Z-8hAaIq7qg?si=dcjIv2WPZ5zHJLJdNow, let’s talk about The Game and Bob Lord… The origins of The Game supposedly reach back to Los Angeles where, in 1973, a graphic designer named Donald Luskin and a friend, Patrick Carlyle, created non-stop, dusk-to-dawn games solving puzzles across the sprawling Los Angeles metropolitan area. Although these games were mostly an “underground” phenomenon, they eventually caught the attention of the Los Angeles Times, which brought the games to the attention of the Walt Disney Company. Disney created a film, released in 1980, named Midnight Madness, based on the games led by Luskin and Carlyle. Although the film was a commercial failure, it caught the attention of a Florida teenager named Joe Belfiore. In the early 1980s, Joe and his friends created their own version of the game like the one portrayed in the film. However, they really took it to the next level when Joe moved to California’s Bay Area to attend Stanford University and their game became The Game…The structure of The Game is essentially that of a scavenger hunt, road race and puzzle-solving challenge that players encounter to take them to a location where another puzzle challenge awaits. Each successfully completed puzzle takes one to a new location. So, one could think of The Game as more of a race. Historically, The Game events always had a story or theme that connected everything.Joe Belfiore once described The Game as “the ultimate test for Renaissance men and women.” As the popularity of The Game increased, it brought in more of Silicon Valley’s elite – venture capitalists, tech company founders, executives at large tech firms and more. The Game events took on a new intensity as well, becoming increasingly expensive, high-tech and psychological as each running of The Game tried to outdo the prior events. Examples I have seen cited include team members being dumped at a strip club after having been relieved of all clothing and possessions and left with nothing but a hospital gown and a clue written in reverse lettering on the back of their necks, being forced to walk around the roof of the Space Needle, having to get a piercing at a tattoo parlor, staged arrests and kidnappings by actors, crashing a gay nightclub where one had to dress in drag and sing “It’s Raining Men” on stage, complex maneuvers involving automatic weapons, helicopters and speed boats… I think you get the idea.In late October of 2002, a particularly epic hosting of The Game launched in the Las Vegas area, named “Shelby Logan’s Run”. One of the participants was 37-year-old Bob Lord, a software engineer that had worked at Microsoft before starting, and then selling, an internet search company named XYZFind. This was Bob Lord’s first time participating in The Game and he showed up prepared with a wet suit, GPS unit, radios, laptop computer, clothing for any situation. But not a good flashlight... After a physically and mentally intense run to 16 other clue sites around Las Vegas, the Hoover Dam, an abandoned prison, Goodsprings and others, the sleep-deprived teams were directed to the Argentena (no, that’s not a typo) Mine where the next clue awaited them. The team were told to walk exactly 1,133 feet on a precise compass heading and to find something called 1306. None of the players knew what 1306 was. Well, 1306 was an adit that had “1306” spray painted on it… However, Bob Lord wanted to scout the route first and climbed up the small hill that you saw at the start of the video. On the way, he recalculated his bearings using his computer and suddenly found himself in front of an adit. For whatever reason, the team decided this was where they should proceed despite “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO” in orange spray paint by the portal and, perhaps more significantly, the number 1296 in blue (You can see the remains of these in the video). Followed by his team members, Bob led the way into the adit, their only light coming from the screen on his GPS unit… His team members heard him slip and then heard only silence despite calling out to him. Bob Lord had fallen down the 30-foot hole you see in the video, crushing vertebrae in his neck as well as both of his arms and suffering serious head trauma. Bob was left a quadriplegic and is now blind as a result of the brain damage he suffered.The Game still continues in various forms, but the bad publicity and extensive litigation following the Bob Lord tragedy emasculated it.
Weird Mine Takes Us In One Side Of The Mountain And Out The Other TVR Exploring 2023-10-11 | There are a lot of weird and cool things about this abandoned mine and it is difficult to know where to start in discussing them… I suppose, we can begin with the underground portion of this mine, which might as well have just been called the “Stope Mine” given the sheer amount of stoping here. In a gold mine (precious metal), you can have a lot of drifting with very little stoping. However, in an industrial metal mine like this one, you’re going to see a lot of stoping because they need volume to eke out a profit with a mineral with such a low weight/price ratio. Even with that said, the sheer amount of surface stoping and, particularly, the amount of stope activity on that tunnel running through the mountain was, well, impressive. The layout of the stope structures were often weird as well – I’m thinking of everything from that “carousel stope” near the beginning to the way that a lot of the stopes were divided and folded in on each other (harder to convey that on camera).And speaking of that tunnel… Yes, that was a true tunnel! To be a true tunnel, it must have openings at both ends and this one did. That is exceptionally rare in mining and it was a fun surprise to discover one. The waste rock on the side that we entered from was tiny and so I hadn’t even turned my camera on in order to check out what I assumed was just a tiny prospect. Instead, it kept going and going and going until it popped out on the other side of the mountain. So, I had to go back to the beginning and start over again with the camera on this time.And the surface stuff? That elaborate network of rails outside was just amazing to me… I am a big fan of rail and so to see all of that rail set up - almost like a mini railroad - was spectacular. It didn’t make sense to have the camera running during the whole time that we were walking around, but that complex rail network ran all over the surface of that side of the mountain. I can’t think of any other mines that I have visited with a more extensive rail network on the surface.This was primarily a lead and zinc mine with the first year of production listed as 1893. Copper, silver and gold were listed as secondary minerals. Other than that, I was able to find practically nothing on the history of this site. It did change names a number of times, which does nothing good for preserving records or in aiding one trying to track down information.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
A Really Special Mine In An Unexpected Place TVR Exploring 2023-10-04 | There was an interesting mineral mix at this abandoned mine… The district was known for copper, lead and silver (which this mine also had small amounts of), but this particular mine was primarily a fluorine-fluorite mine. It is almost unfathomable to me that the miners here could have made a profit from a small operation for an industrial mineral like that. However, I suppose that with a lot of hard work and resourcefulness (plenty of evidence of that at this site), that the miners might have pulled it off. I sure hope that they did!So, the story of our adventure on the drive to the mine… The road in was fairly rough and we became high-centered on a large boulder. It was one of those winning the negative lottery experiences - we could have driven over it with no trouble 1,000 times, but on this occasion happened to hit it just right, which kicked the truck up onto the boulder and left the tires stranded in loose gravel. It took some work as the loose sand and gravel was not very helpful in supporting a jack, but we eventually got the truck jacked up and packed all the rocks we could find under the tires to get the truck off the boulder as much as possible and to provide as much traction as possible. With some effort on the part of the truck and some new dents to add character, we got the truck off the boulder and continued for just several hundred feet to the mine. Yes, we were that close when we got stuck.Upon arriving at the mine, the truck suddenly died. Jeremy restarted the truck and warning lights lit up the instrument panel like a Christmas tree, the engine made a horrible sound and black smoke poured out of the exhaust. Seeing all of that was not a good feeling and not what you would expect from a Toyota!We had sufficient water, but we did not have phone service out there. And this mine is a long, LONG walk from anything. We calculated that the nearest town was about 15-20 miles away as the crow flies – and it is a tiny town... Trying to make the hike during the heat of the day in the summer would likely have been deadly because we didn’t have THAT much water. However, struggling to make the hike at night had its own risks because we’d be cutting cross country and would have had a harder time staying on the right course, avoiding rolled ankles in the rocky terrain, etc. Less important, but still of some significance - two of us also had flights the next morning that we had to catch.We figured that if we were at the mine though, we might as well explore it. So, we set out to explore the mine and hoped for the best. It was a great mine, but we had a slight worry about the truck hanging over us the whole time.We returned to the truck as it was getting dark and there was certainly no small amount of anticipation when Jeremy pushed the “Start” button. However, it fired right up without a hint of trouble and had no problems at all on the drive out.We ultimately concluded that the sensors overheated from the very hot day, the slow and grinding drive to get out to the mine and the effort required from the truck to get off the boulder. Being pissed off from being overheated, the sensors simply threw a temper tantrum.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Wild Underground World Of Blue: A Natural Marvel TVR Exploring 2023-09-27 | We’ve seen some pretty impressive blues in abandoned copper mines before, but the blueness in this mine took things to the next level… To those unfamiliar with the properties of copper ores: when various copper ores are exposed to the air (oxidized), they take on the brilliant blues that you see in this video. Check out pictures of chalcanthite and azurite for a couple examples of this phenomenon.The valuable ore body at this particular mine was discovered in the early 1900s and it was worked off and on (like almost all mines are) until the 1940s. Although the copper certainly dominates as a theme at this mine, there are also large amounts of tin present. In addition, respectable quantities of silver, gold and lead have been reported as byproducts of production.We have noticed a marked increase in surveying and sampling activity at abandoned copper mines over the past couple of years as our economy becomes increasingly electrified and demand for copper is projected to soar. I’m sure that you noticed the ribbons and spray paint from such work at this mine as well. Given what we saw underground here, it would not surprise me to see the entire mountain hosting this mine turned into an open pit. As such, I’m glad that we documented what was here as I expect it shall soon be gone. As always, once I confirm that an abandoned mine site has been destroyed, I go back and change the video title to the actual name of the site and, usually, provide more details in the description below the video. I’ve already explained many times why we cannot share locations and so I won’t bore you by repeating that again.I found it exceedingly difficult to not mix lyrics from the “Blue” song by Eiffel 65 into the title, thumbnail or commentary on this video. In fact, two other titles I considered using were: It’s A Blue (Underground) WorldLiving In A Blue World (All Day and All Night)I should be commended for my restraint in using a more sober title.youtube.com/watch?v=68ugkg9RePc“Yo listen up, here's the storyAbout a little guy that lives in a blue worldAnd all day and all night and everything he sees is just blueLike him, inside and outsideBlue his house with a blue little windowAnd a blue CorvetteAnd everything is blue for himAnd himself and everybody around'Cause he ain't got nobody to listenI'm blue da ba dee da ba daaDa ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daaDa ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daaI'm blue da ba dee da ba daaDa ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daaDa ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daa, da ba dee da ba daaI have a blue house with a blue windowBlue is the color of all that I wearBlue are the streets and all the trees are tooI have a girlfriend and she is so blueBlue are the people here that walk aroundBlue like my Corvette, it's in and outsideBlue are the words I say and what I thinkBlue are the feelings that live inside me”*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Lost Worlds Project: Unveiling The Hidden World TVR Exploring 2023-09-20 | Something that is not really coming across in this “Lost Worlds Project” video is how complex it is to figure out how to keep making progress. This isn’t a normal abandoned mine where you just follow the adit and then go down a couple of crosscuts or whatever. This mine is like a 4D labyrinth. And it isn’t just one mine – there are multiple intersecting mines here. And with different passages blocked by caved areas, we must shift back and forth between the different mines as we continue our descent. This means that the normal logic that one can follow in exploring an abandoned mine is out the window. Sometimes, we must go UP to go DOWN. For example, we may have to go up to the sublevel of another mine in order to drop to the next level down of the mine that we had just been in. It’s crazy and confusing and it takes a lot of trial and error (and rope) to be able to locate the next piece of the puzzle that allows us to go lower. I’ll talk about it more in the upcoming “Lost Worlds Project” videos, but this is unquestionably the most complex route that we’ve ever had to follow to gain access to mine workings – and it does not become any less complex the deeper we go! I can’t wait for you guys to see what is on the next couple of levels down…I really wish that you could have seen what was involved with that drop down at the beginning of the video into the level shown in this chapter of the series, but there is just no opportunity for filming in this section… After sliding down to the top of the rotten ladder and worming through the tiny space to get into the vertical drop, there is about forty feet of squeezing along the side of the rotten ladder (without putting any weight on it) before it drops away completely and you’re just weaving through rocks to end up at that chamber where I started filming. This part of the mine isn’t necessarily wet, but it is damp enough that all the wooden infrastructure is completely rotted and unreliable.We were the first people on these levels of the mine since the crew in the mid-1930s. The crew here then was not mining, but were doing testing, sampling and core drilling. I don’t know if they used the ore cars and wheelbarrows then. So, they may be even older than that period and date back to when actual mining was still taking place on that level. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Awesome Mine Perched On The Edge Of A Cliff TVR Exploring 2023-09-13 | This abandoned mine had little trouble ending up on the “favorites” list. The setting was awesome. The layout of the underground workings was quite interesting. It delivered with the interesting artifacts left behind. I even loved the miner’s trail that I discovered on the way down. And great aesthetics on top of all that? Yes, I’m into it. Sign me up for more.This was primarily a lead and zinc mine (we’ve had very good results with those types of mines over the years) with copper, silver and gold as bonus secondary minerals.There is surprisingly little historical information on this mine in the public domain. What I did locate stated that the ore body was discovered in 1901. Apparently, a large amount of work was done in 1911 and again in 1919. However, there are no records available past 1919. What we saw inside of the mine though strongly suggests that work was done at this abandoned mine as recently as the 1950s. I am, of course, referring to the dates written with the carbide lamps, but also to the equipment that we found underground.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
The Toy Soldier Mine Hides A Cool Surprise TVR Exploring 2023-09-07 | The last mine I posted a video of us exploring was a gigantic gold mine. This one, by contrast, is a little bit smaller… We don’t discriminate here at TVR Exploring though. We like big mines AND small mines. Some of the small mines have a lot more character and are a lot more interesting than the big mines – especially the modern big mines.We couldn’t locate any history on this mine other than that it was a gold mine. It seems like it might have been a family operation or a couple of friends. It would be nice to think that they earned enough to at least break even on this project, but I highly doubt that given the small size of the adit and the lack of depth on the surface workings above. As I said in the video, it was essentially just dirt pushed around with some quartz in it. The quartz is probably what got their attention in the first place.I loved having the workshop connected directly to the adit so that you would literally have to walk through the workshop to get into the adit (that mound of dirt in front would not have been there when the mine was being worked). I imagine that those working there probably slept in that building as well. So, they could have rolled out of bed and gone straight underground. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Bringing An Abandoned Gold Mine Back To Life: Part 21 of ? TVR Exploring 2023-08-30 | It has been a little while since I have posted an update, but we have been doing a lot of the same (an endless cycle of drill, blast, haul out the waste rock, repeat) and I have already shown that multiple times. So, I like for there to be something a little different or new in order to try and keep the videos interesting… That is also why I tend to keep the actual mining videos shorter than the exploring videos. Even the most keen mining enthusiasts would likely have their eyes glaze over if I had shown the full forty minutes or however long it was of us disassembling the Jackleg drill.We’re farther along now, but in the drilling scene in this video, we were probably about 40% done with this side drift at the 1600. The goal is to push ahead for another one hundred feet or so and then to carve out a drill station. The drilling will give us an idea of the location and condition of the abandoned workings above. Our geologist is confident that we’ll be able to block out good ore reserves while we’re drilling to locate and assess the caved workings. However, I think he is underestimating the capabilities of the old timers. We’ll see…I had hoped that we would intercept some of the caved abandoned workings on this level as we started running this drift. Specifically, I was thinking of those caved drifts that wing out to the left as one is headed back to the 1600 station. However, it now seems that those drifts did not parallel the main adit. If you’ll recall, those caved side drifts are a mystery as no maps survive (or ever existed?) of those old workings. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
The Giant Gold Mine: The Truth Comes Out TVR Exploring 2023-08-23 | I hope that my comments about the mine shaft throughout the video made sense in the end. It was not until the very end of the mine exploration that we realized that there was only one shaft rather than several. It was also at the very end of the mine exploration that we realized that it had been the same shaft that we had been intercepting all of the way down. And, of course, it was not until the very end of the mine exploration that we then realized what I had been standing on halfway down the shaft. Now, to be fair, you saw how much dirt had tumbled down on top of the wood and rock debris that had plugged the shaft. So, the odds that my additional weight could have dislodged it are almost incalculably small. However, it is still somewhat unsettling to consider what was beneath the plug that I was tromping around on.It may be somewhat difficult to understand why we were left so confused by the shaft at this abandoned mine without having been there. I believe the key source of this confusion has to do with the direction of the shaft itself. The shaft starts out vertically and runs vertically for the first 150 feet or so. Therefore, when we hit the shaft at the 100 level, we assumed that it kept dropping vertically. Well, as you saw, it did not! Just below where we intercepted it at the 100 level, the shaft bends and then starts dropping at an increasingly shallow angle. This really threw off our mental calculations. Furthermore, in mapping the layout of the mine at the end of the mine, the stopes and winze wrapped around the shaft in an odd way that only added to the confusion. All in all, it was a good lesson about not making assumptions.We came close to getting beneath that plug in the mine shaft in a couple of places on that bottom level of the winze, but in each case we were ultimately thwarted by collapses. I have to confess that my disappointment on this matter is not extreme. The clay-filled ground in there was terrible and I cannot imagine that it improved as the mine got deeper and things got more wet. The incredible amount of groundfall had eliminated most of the workings that we tried to explore (a lot was left hidden behind caved sections) and the moisture levels had destroyed most of the artifacts. Completely aside from the danger, it was simply slow and tedious to be constantly fighting through the caved sections for little reward.I’m very glad that we ran this one out as much as possible though as that scene with all of the ore cars perched next to the inviting winze would definitely have been eating at me for a while.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Giant Gold Mine Was More Than It Seemed TVR Exploring 2023-08-16 | I was struggling to come up with a video title for our explore of this giant abandoned gold mine. So, I thought of the way that it felt for us to suddenly see those fantastic ore cars and that very promising winze after so long of stumbling through the clay-filled, and mostly artifact-free, halls and galleries above… That area with the ore cars and the winze even had nice, solid rock, which made us optimistic about having finally gotten below the clay layers. Therefore, the mine suddenly had the appearance of offering more than it seemed in the first hours.That winze cried out to us as well. Very few people are willing or able to get on the ropes and to make their way down such vertical and near-vertical drops underground. So, that naturally filters out most of the looting of such historical sites and is, obviously, why we always have high hopes for the hard-to-reach areas. Having the abandoned mine suddenly take a dramatic turn for the better, right at the top of that somewhat messy (but large) winze certainly made us curious what was down there.Also, as we considered it a certainty that the main shaft was plugged somewhere below us from all of the infrastructure and debris that had come crashing down it, we thought this winze might offer us a way around the blockage in the main shaft. The stopes had seemed to parallel the main shaft down to the point where the winze was. So, our hope was that we could continue the descent via stopes and possibly other winzes. We considered it to be a pretty safe assumption that very few people had made it to the depths of this mine after it was abandoned. Oh, and for a point of reference, we came in via the adit on the 100 level and figured that we had gotten down to the 300 or 400 level. If you’ll recall from the video, this mine dropped down for 11 levels (1100 feet). Therefore, there was a considerable amount below us that was still waiting to be explored. Yes, the waste rock and mill tailings outside were enormous!Thus, filled with optimism about good ground and great artifacts down that winze, we return to run it out as far as we can on our next video of this abandoned mine.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Chasing Down The Out-Of-The-Way Gold Mines Of The Sierra Nevadas TVR Exploring 2023-08-09 | We’ve been hitting the deserts, mountains, jungles (and more) pretty hard over the past months to find the most unique, interesting abandoned mine sites that we can for you… Given the growing public interest in mine exploration and the determination of various federal agencies to eliminate these same historical mines, we must increasingly get to the most out-of-the-way mines that we can to find the real treasures. Really, that serves as a metaphor for many things in life! The summer season is a busy one for the TVR crew as that is when we accumulate much of our content. The winter weather prevents us from exploring much of the Sierra Nevadas and much of the desert regions of Nevada and elsewhere. Yes, those desert regions are desert, but they are HIGH desert, which means that they are subjected to much of the same extreme weather that blocks us in the mountains. Thus, our winter trips are often restricted to places like Tombstone in Arizona. I have been chatting with the lads with QLD Abandoned Mines in Australia though and they have extended an invitation to come down and explore Australian mines with them. Visiting the southern hemisphere during winter in the northern hemisphere would certainly solve the trouble with the limited abandoned mine access of winter…Having just returned from two serious back-to-back mine exploring trips, I can assure you that there is a lot of good stuff sitting on the hard drive, waiting to be edited. I look forward to getting it out to you. I hope that you also enjoy the videos, such as this one, of the smaller mines and the things that we find along the way while we are hunting the big mines. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Underground Southeast Asia: A Mining Adventure TVR Exploring 2023-08-02 | I certainly wouldn’t want to see this channel get stuck in a rut. So, that’s why we’re headed back underground in some of the frontiers of mine exploring. Oh, yes, we have dodged the monsoon rains and the brutal, sticky heat from the mountains of Myanmar to the sprawling deltas of Vietnam before. Of course, those aren’t the only challenges in Southeast Asia. You have the bad roads, language barriers, unexploded ordnance in some areas, organized crime groups, some unpalatable foods, the often insane traffic, disease, desperate poverty, the occasional terrorist attack…On one of our prior visits, we visited the Ijen sulfur mines in Indonesia. If you haven’t seen that video yet, I strongly encourage you to watch it. It isn’t that long and it is one of my best videos. Yet not many people have seen it… This is the link below:youtube.com/watch?v=1ybbbePvnVEReally, I suppose this most recent trip should be considered as a part of a broader exploration project on the region. I try to push the channel into interesting areas for you, dear viewers, which is why I visited the mines in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Italy, Portugal and others. We’re visiting Tunisia and Libya in October in order to try to run down some ancient Roman mines. Unfortunately, when I visited some of the really interesting mines in Sudan or other parts of Africa or the lapis mines in Afghanistan, I wasn’t into documenting mine exploring yet and so I don’t have videos of those. That’s a shame because they were fantastic.I’ll have to go back, I suppose… For now, I hope you enjoy the views of Southeast Asia that are in this video. There are few places left in our world for explorers and adventurers. The oceans are one outlet. The lost worlds underground are another... Humanity seems to have lost much of its heroic spirit to carry us out into the stars. I yearn for the stars, but, for now, must content myself with the darkness underground rather than the darkness in the sky. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Life in a Gold Mining Camp: Alaskas Independence Mine TVR Exploring 2023-07-19 | The large mountain that you see looming over the Independence Mine throughout this video is Skyscraper Mountain… In 1906, a man named Robert Lee Hatcher discovered lode gold near the summit and filed a mining claim on the site. Hatcher’s discovery unleashed a gold mining boom in the area and multiple mines and mining camps sprang up in the area (now called Hatcher Pass).One of the largest of these gold mines and mining camps was the Independence Mine that is showcased in this video. I’ve seen estimates ranging from 140,000 ounces to 165,000 ounces of gold taken out of the Independence Mine… At its peak, the Independence Mine was reported to employ 206 workers and was home to 16 families.As with other gold mines, the Independence Mine was ordered to be shut down by the US government during World War II. And, just as with so many other gold mines, the Independence Mine struggled to recover after its forced shutdown. The mine limped along until 1951 when it shut down forever. Alaska designated the Independence Mine as a state historical site in 1982. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Chasing Down Nevadas Out-Of-The-Way Mines TVR Exploring 2023-07-12 | With so many new mine exploring channels and a rapidly shrinking supply of mines, we’ve been focusing more of our time and energy on the out-of-the-way mines of Nevada and the Sierras in an effort to continue to deliver fresh and interesting content… There will be exceptions, of course, as some abandoned mines that have been heavily visited still have interesting elements to them. However, we have an aversion to crowds and so are increasingly finding ourselves out on the fringes of the abandoned mine exploring hotspots.My international mine exploring has been a part of this as well as it has taken me to some abandoned mines that have never been visited by other mine explorers and many that may have been visited on occasion, but have never been documented. With the exception of the mine at Engilchek in Kyrgyzstan though (and that video was successful because of the oddity that I experienced there rather than the mine itself), the views on the international mines are never as good as those of the mines in the U.S. I find that curious as I would expect viewers to be intrigued by the new and the exotic. Oh well, I’m often surprised by the TVR Exploring videos that end up being the most popular and the least popular.By the way, I don’t think I ever mentioned it, but that series of Engilchek videos very nearly didn’t happen because I almost had my cameras confiscated at one of the military checkpoints we passed through. I’m not a stranger to such situations and I handled it, but I had let my guard down and almost paid a high price for it. I learned very quickly during the time that I was working as a war reporter to immediately swap out memory cards whenever I had something good recorded as confiscation is a high risk in war zones. A tiny memory card is easy to hide, while a bulky camera is not.Ha, this went way off of abandoned mines… In short, we’ve had some wild successes with our new policy of going off of the mine exploring beaten path and many deep disappointments. I’d say it averages out in the middle in this video. I hope you enjoy it.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
The Richest Silver Mines Of Guanajuato TVR Exploring 2023-07-06 | Most of my prior international mine exploring trips have been planned, but this visit to the silver mines of Guanajuato was a product of circumstance rather than planning… The highly mineralized veins of silver, gold and zinc in this part of Mexico had already been discovered by the natives before the arrival of the Spanish. The natives used wedges of wood and lime to extract the prized minerals.In 1585, the Spanish discovered the rich veins that the natives had been working in this area, and in 1592 the Jesuits obtained permission to work them. Perhaps it is simply due to the amount of time that has passed, but it is difficult to locate much in the way of records relating to the period in which the Jesuits were operating mines in the “New World” aside from rumors on treasure hunting forums of lost Jesuit mines.A few little hiccups along the way, such as the Mexican War of Independence, eventually idled the mines. However, in 1888, advancements in mining technology, an industrial revolution hungry for raw materials and sufficient social stability brought investors back into this region to open up the mines again. Most, but certainly not all, of the mine infrastructure and workings seen in this video dates to that era…One of the most prolific mining operations was the Hacienda de los Cinco Senores, which had mines such as the La Joya, Nayalito and Justicia. The “Five Senores” name stems from the fact that, in 1889, the year of its development, five European businessmen pooled their capital to exploit the minerals here. It soon became one of the most productive mining operations in the area and shipped its ore as far away as Mexico City for processing.Some of the other richest mines producing on the Mineral de Pozos veins were the Santa Brigida, Escondida, Triangulo, Potosina, El Dorado, Trinidad, Ocampo, Nona and the Angustias Mine.The Angustias Mine (the last mine shown in the video) was owned by the Angustias y Anexas company, and its heyday at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries centered on the fat vein that ran underground directly beneath where I stood while filming the video. The Angustias Mine employed more than 1,000 workers that operated in two shifts. So, there would have been constant activity at this abandoned mine.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Bringing An Abandoned Gold Mine Back To Life: Part 20 of ? TVR Exploring 2023-05-24 | You often hear me say that exploring abandoned mines is really hard on gear. Well, guess what? Mining – gold or anything else - is really hard on gear as well… And, to be fair, a loader or an excavator is more expensive than any camera that I have ended up destroying underground. Combine the inevitable abuse that mining heaps on equipment with a slow day when we were on hold while waiting for multiple deliveries and you get us taking on the distinctive boulder in front of the mine.I’ll show you more on the slusher in upcoming videos as all of us have ended up preferring it to the mucker, but, rest assured, it is not without its downsides and problems as well. The biggest problem we have had is that ice builds up inside of the slusher through frequent use and slowly bogs it down until it becomes unusable. Then, there is a long wait for the slusher to thaw out (thawing out underground is a slow process). Of course, it also needs to be fed lots of vegetable oil every day. Given that the compressed air the mining equipment runs off of aerosolizes the oil in our rock drill, slusher, etc., we use vegetable oil for lubrication rather than petroleum-based oil.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Wild Mineralization In This Rodent-Infested Mine TVR Exploring 2023-05-16 | We’d already had a long day of exploring abandoned mines by the time we got to this one, but that wild mineralization you see in the video definitely made the effort worth it... As you can probably imagine with the number of mines that we have visited, we have seen some pretty exotic mineralization over the years, but we’ve never seen anything quite like what is seen in this mine. I know the geology of the Sierra Nevadas fairly well, but I am far less familiar with the complicated geology of Nevada. As such, I’m hoping that one of the geologists in the audience can weigh in and tell us (or at least speculate) on the mineralization here. This mine was originally developed for gold and silver, but actual production amounts are vague and, reading between the lines, a couple of reports were suggestive of a swindle. Peak work appears to have been from 1909 to 1915. Deposits of barite were worked in the district more recently. *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Bringing An Abandoned Gold Mine Back To Life: Part 19 of ? TVR Exploring 2023-05-03 | Winter may be receding, but it is still cold on the mountain. A somewhat pleasant day or two at the gold mine will be followed by a week or two of freezing winds and even snow still! This was a long winter and it seems like it is fighting hard to live on for as long as possible. We have seen no sign of the squirrels yet. I hope they made it through this winter. Speaking of life and making it… As some of you know, I worked as a war journalist for about a decade. Therefore, I’m no stranger to seeing pictures or video of people that I knew before they were killed. However, it still has an impact on me every time. It’s difficult for me to articulate, but there’s something poignant about the images that don’t seem significant at the time, but take on so much significance later when you look back and realize that you were seeing the final days or moments of someone… I mentioned to a friend that I had come across footage of Matt when I was working on this video. He responded in a half-joking fashion that I should sensationalize the thumbnail to something like “RIP Matt – His Final Days” or some other clickbaity nonsense because other big YouTube channels would. I realized that he was right, but it had never even occurred to me to do that… And I won’t do that. I’m not saying that I am a saint, but I am weary of the self-promotion and clickbait that seems to have infected the mine exploring community on YouTube over the past couple of years.*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Winze-Dropping Old Gold Mines In The Desert TVR Exploring 2023-04-19 | This was a gold mine and, from what I could gather, the discovery of the site dates back to the 1880s, but production did not begin seriously until the early 1900s… This mine is also supposed to have connected to another mine. I don’t see where we might have missed that. So, either I’m wrong, the access to the other mine was hidden behind one of the caved sections or we *did* intercept the other mine without realizing it. When researching abandoned mines, it can sometimes be difficult to pin down details given vague location information, name changes, missing records, etc.It's good that we had the rope with us as I could not have accessed that lower level without it. It was difficult getting back up that winze with just being able to use the rope as a hand line and having to bring the dusty rope up behind me though! Given how much of a pain it was to crawl through all of the rubble to reach the section where the winzes were, I was not keen on crawling back out to the trucks to retrieve all of the climbing gear. So, I allowed myself to be seduced by the gentle angle at the start of that winze into thinking it would be easy all of the way down. “Oh, those other guys are overreacting. This winze isn’t bad.” *****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
Exploring The Unexplored Beneath Tombstone: Part 2 of 2 TVR Exploring 2023-04-12 | We’ve been chasing down the remaining unexplored nooks and crannies of the Girard Mine on this visit… However, I believe that there will always remain new frontiers to uncover in this mine. For example, Andrew just told me of another “time capsule” section they discovered in a stope that is difficult to reach that hadn’t been seen in almost a century. And, of course, for future explorers, there is whatever is hidden behind the caved sections of the mine. We’re not done in Tombstone either. Andrew has secured permission to explore a whole new mine complex that just changed owners and is working on securing permission to access another component of the mines in Tombstone. As always, you can visit the Girard Mine yourself and see some of these places that you’ve seen in the videos. Get in touch for a visit at: goodenoughsilvermine.com or on Facebook at “Tombstone’s Goodenough Mine Tour”*****You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9LYou can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon. Thanks for watching!*****Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!#ExploringAbandonedMines#MineExploring#AbandonedMines#UndergroundMineExploring
