Strange Nevada Gold Mine In Incredible Setting
Strange Nevada Gold Mine In Incredible Setting
We put some serious abuse on a Jeep taking a “shortcut” in to this strange Nevada gold mine, but, whatever… It was for a good cause. Jeeps are notoriously unreliable anyway, right? So, no big loss. And a Jeep with some rather significant cosmetic damage to the exterior simply demonstrates that it was being used as it should be, right? To be fair, I’ve been in some interesting places with Jeeps, but my years of running with various insurgent groups and rebel armies in some of the worst places around the world has given me an unwavering faith in Toyota 4WDs.
So, the strange mine we have here – approximately half a mile of workings, two shafts at a depth of almost 400 feet (the distance from the ridgetop to the haulage adit level) and that open stope… The shafts and open stope (which may have started out as surface workings) on the top of the ridge were pursued first. And what the miners found was obviously good enough to lead them to construct the cyanide mill (a big investment even a century ago) and to drive that large adit in for haulage as well as to access the deeper ore bodies and the convenience of hauling the ore out and right into the top level of the mill. For those of you that are not as familiar with mining, gravity makes it much easier to drop ore and waste rock down rather than to haul it out. Thus, you’ll see shafts often have a haulage adit connected to them to haul out the heavy material, stopes drop down to ore chutes, etc.
This abandoned mine is in a pretty remote area of Nevada, but what an incredible setting! I wish all of you could have been there in person to see the morning sun hitting those rocky cliffs, causing them to glow a brilliant red. I’m sure the miners never tired of that view. Really, I regret not thinking to pull the camera out to try and capture the sunrise because the scenery was amazing in every direction in that light.
By the way, in case it wasn’t clear in the comment above, we spent the night on the waste rock pile of this mine. If you find yourself camping in the desert often, but you’re not a mine explorer, you may not know this. However, it’s hard to beat a waste rock pile at a mine for a great camping spot. You’ve got a nice flat area to park and set up your camp, the rock makes it safer to have a campfire, you’ve got cool air blowing out of the adit… If you camp next to one though, please don’t fall down a mine shaft. Abandoned mines already have enough working against them. We don’t need more fuel on the fire. Oh, and one of my friends consumed too much tequila while we were there and was in rough shape the next morning. Be careful of tequila as well…
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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so I’d encourage you to adjust your settings to the highest quality if it is not done automatically.
You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: https://bit.ly/2wqcBDD
As well as a small gear update here: https://bit.ly/2p6Jip6
You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: https://goo.gl/TEKq9L
Several 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!
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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. But, you know what? We enjoy doing it! This is exploring history firsthand – bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a century, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind… These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born.
So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
#ExploringAbandonedMines
#MineExploring
#AbandonedMines
#UndergroundMineExploring
What you call a drift we call a drive or a shaft tunnel here in Australian mining
Very Cool….
Surprised they kept the bark on those natural timbers. Thought bark increased the risk of rotting, although maybe it’s so dry there it doesn’t matter
Explores or gold/silver lookers??
si
Why not show the vein they were following?
To be PC it should be person way? Not man way 😀
I’ve been going to northern Nevada every September to explore gold mines and ghost towns. I go solo so I don’t go far past the portal. Amazing how much cooler the mines are. I haven’t run into bats yet.
That white is great for lighting! Always glad to see you’ve got some friends along with you on these incredibly isolated explorations
That’s about 32 degrees north of hell no for me.
Super cool, 🦘👍
That’s one of the cleanest mines I’ve ever seen.
So the turn back and danger sighs were real huh.
Thank you
lol Down in front.
You may be a bit jaded, I watch a lot of mine exploring videos and I never get tired of watching the initial walk into the adit. As someone who can’t get out and explore these mines, I start to feel like I’m there with you until you cut me off with " I’ll turn the camera off and get back to you when I see something interesting " it kinda breaks the third wall. Just keep in mind your audience may be broader than you know. Hanging on every shot for just a glimpse of everything you take for granted sometimes I want to take the camera from you so I can look at something that catches my eye! Lol can you tell that I’m obsessed?
Please add that how much gold was extracted from the mine and how many years?
Sounds like you got a cold.
Things start getting real sketchy at 9:40 onward
At 0:54, I noticed the mine doesn’t have any timber supports. Why not? I thought you’re supposed to have that to prevent a collapse.
I know it won’t happen, but I keep bracing myself in case a monster pops out.
So did all the pay dirt come from these nice straight level passages?? 98% good stuff must still be in there!
I started out thinking this mine looked much less sketchy than usual, then suddenly you’re crossing a century old board over a deadly pit. Amazing site and mine, one can only imagine how much unexplored ground remains underneath. Not surprised but still glad to know you’re not going without a helmet under these delaminating slabs.
Any. Gold. In. The. Mine
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If you could give little information about the mine when it was worked last not anything that gives it’s location.
Those look like juniper trees because of the stringy bark.
where’s the gold ????/
wow thats hot
I worked in the Star Mine up Burke Canyon in northern Idaho for about 10 years, until it closed in June of 82, at a depth of 8300 feet. I don’t really understand why they drove so many drifts in so many different directions in the mine you’re in. The way they did it at the Star, Bunker, Galina, Lucky Friday mine was to sink a shaft about 100 feet off the ore vein. Then drive drifts, following the vein, but staying 100 feet away. We would drive cross-cuts off the main drift to about 50 feet past the ore vein. We would then start to mine up on the vein 10 feet and then mine out, following the vein. The cross cuts were usually 200 feet apart. The cross-cuts were driven 50 feet past the vein so they could get the ore cars under the shoots. This was, to me, a uniform way of mining. Not a bunch of tunnels going in random directions. And each level was 200 feet apart. I started on level 7500 in 1972.
"Trees from outside" a.k.a. logs
Pretty clean.
That would’ve my greatest FEAR getting LOST
Looks like some sort of Explosives note at 11:35.
Very interested at least this one was Dry cheers
The temperature outside wasn’t 112, just the temperature inside your car was from the sun.
19:56 Due to the apparent remoteness of the mine, it was probably cheaper/easier to cut down nearby trees than it would’ve been to have milled lumber delivered to the site.
112° is TOO HOT 🔥!!
I also do mining but me I’m getting my gold from e waste not from land mines. Let’s do some scrapping my friend’s.
Here’s over a half pound gold nugget found in Humboldt Co NV!
https://youtu.be/8McwyTr4QEk
I see hunter burden art on the wall there beside the label made in china
You found a remote and interesting mine for us to follow you & your mates through. At 17:26, and again in the shute at 18:45, what is the powdery looking substance? Wow! the entire mine was shored up with natural wood….lots of work for the miners in that endevor. Lots of yellow sulfides through out the mine…..that means gold. Great drone shot of the powdery stone type on the waste rock pile and sloughing off into an old gulch. Thanks for your efforts in doing this explore. It was interesting.
Ah, they call them "logs".
My Great Uncle owned a lot of land in Nevada and Texas, both had old mines on them. No matter what he did to keep people out of them, people would always find a way to break in. This was in the 1980s. After his death in 1992, his sons Filled up the mine shafts with rocks and block them up. In 1998 one of the old mines towards the edge of their land was dug out by illegal miners and it caved in. two families tried to sue them for their deaths. they claimed there wasn’t any no trespassing signs or Danger signs lol Here is the funny part of it, they went there to mine for gold :/ There was never any gold found on that land. It was a very old copper mine
"years of running with various insurgent groups and rebel armies in some of the worst places around the world"
Really? C’mon man!
That’s strange to graffiti the opening date of WF on a mine long after the fact. Wells Fargo opened in 1852.
That’s like you guys spray painting “Dutch Bro’s Coffee 1992” today.
Do it
On the back (i.e. above) at 3:32 and 24:49, and in the rib (i.e. side) at 25:18 you can see breccia in a grey matrix. The grey mattrix may contain very fine grained pyrite, iron sulphide FeS2, and could be low or high grade ore. The veins at 8:19 could be very fine grained breccia in pyrite and quartz. The yellow stains throughout the mine are likely to be jarosite, KFe3(SO4)2(OH)6, whose SO4 sulfate is a common an oxidation product of pyrite in potassic rocks. The relatively wide and square drifts suggest the miners were driving through fairly soft rhyolite tuffs, some of which are likely to be welded. Rhyolite and rhyolite tuffs are typically white and contain Sanidine, K(AlSi3O8), which can be a source of the potassium, K, that is in jarosite. Those minerals and rocks are commonly associated with epithermal gold deposits. Some of these deposits are near rhyolite flow-domes, which are extruded or near-surface volcanic necks. The flow-domes can be round or lenticular or irregular when viewed from above. The domes can be flow-banded (i.e. plate-like), contain visible quartz crystals, and are very hard, forming prominent ridges or hills (surrounded by tuffs). Eruptions of rhyolite can be explosive when in contact with water, can cause stockworks of small gold veins, which may not be economic for underground mining, and the shallowest ones can be capped by hot spring sinters. Some of the best gold for open pit mining can be close to the domes, and can even be below a dome (in the adjacent tuffs). While this mine has been sampled (most of the spray paint marks rock chip sampling locations), a larger open pit mine target may be uphill, where a rhyolite banded flow-dome may exist at 28:52. It can be slow and expensive to blast a road on top of a rhyolite dome, Depending on the existence of flow-banded rhyolite and depending on seeing more evidences of breccias or stockworks, after staking claims I might (assuming I was an exploration geologist and could get the budget) place drill rig pads (to drill for an open pit target) above the highest workings and perhaps on the other side of the ridge, with its plate-like rock outcrops (as seen 28:52). On the other hand, I would expect to see more than one mine around the ridge, more breccias and stockworks than what was in the mine, plus that ridge may not be a rhyolite flow dome, so 28:52 may not be a good target.
Men worked hard every day in that place. Now it’s just a forgotten place.
cedar logs
you hard hat wouldn’t save you if that piece of ceiling comes down